


Without A Noise (Without My Pride)

by LayALioness



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-07
Updated: 2016-01-07
Packaged: 2018-05-12 09:01:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5660587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LayALioness/pseuds/LayALioness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Bell, do you have any Graduation Resolutions?”</p><p>“Any what?”</p><p>“They’re like New Year’s resolutions,” Harper says, rolling her eyes because clearly she’s heard this explanation before. “But for graduation day, instead. Monroe’s trying to make it happen.”</p><p>“It’s going to happen,” Monroe says, adamant. “I’ve already set up a Facebook page—it has like, fifteen likes. Bellamy, what's yours?"</p><p>“I’m going to ask out Clarke Griffin,” he says, grinning, and Monroe predictably gasps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Without A Noise (Without My Pride)

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is basically the 1980s John Hughes movie Say Anything, which you should go watch immediately if you never have. also it's really just an excuse for me to write punk-songwriter Harper and n/b Monroe as bffs with Bellamy, so there's that. 
> 
> ALSO it was written over the course of a 3 day road trip across the American Midwest, as you do.

Bellamy knows the basics of what to expect from his high school graduation. Except—it’s a little different, since his mom won’t be there, and O’s twice as excited as normal, since he’ll be the first in their family to graduate. She’d had to drop out, to have Kai, and ended up getting her GED at the local community college. It was tough for her, he knows—Octavia isn’t like Bellamy; high school came easily to her. She was a cheerleader, and on the volleyball team, and she was voted Most Likely To Take Over The World as a sophomore.

So, ever since their mom died when he was fourteen and O took over guardianship, she’s been pretty much living vicariously through him, which is probably more frustrating for her to be honest, since he’s essentially a hermit. He has a few good friends, but mostly they just sit around and complain about the last season of _Lost_ a lot, while Raven works on whatever that week’s robotics club is cooking up, and Harper writes a bunch of two-minute songs about her ex-girlfriend. Monroe just sort of comes and goes as they please.

“Who hangs out in the _library_?” Octavia whines, again. Bellamy just ignores her and slides his half-empty yoghurt cup over to Kai. He likes to eat the bits of fruit at the bottom.

“My friends,” Bellamy shrugs. “But sometimes we hang out at the record store, instead,” he points out, and O throws a pair of Kai’s socks at his head, nailing him all the way from across the room, where she’s haphazardly folding the laundry. Honestly he’s not really sure why she bothers; his older sister has a lot of talents, but cleaning is not one of them. Domesticity in general isn’t really in O’s wheelhouse.

“Can I come?” Kai asks, slurping up the last of the mixed berry soup. His whole mouth is stained blue, almost black, now, and O glares at Bellamy, like it’s his fault, which. Well, it kind of is.

“Not this time, squirt,” he reaches over to ruffle Kai’s hair; the curls are growing back out, after he begged them to shave it into a Mohawk, last summer. But over the last few months, he seems to have decided have an actual hair style takes too much work.

Kai slumps down in his seat, sulkily. He’s recently six, and it shows. Bellamy thought the _two’s_ were bad—he was not prepared for his nephew entering the first grade. Now he’s old enough to have an actual vocabulary, and it seems like he learns a new swear word each week, which he only likes to yell at really inappropriate moments, like the movie theater, or at the Food Lion downtown.

“You say that _every_ time,” he whines, and Bellamy doesn’t argue. He knows it’s true; he loves his nephew, he does, and he’d do anything for him, but _anything_ does not include dragging him along to parties, or even the record store where Harper works. Harper is the most creative swearer he knows, and he really doesn’t need her influencing Kai.

“When you’re older, I’ll take you to your first Kegger,” Bellamy promises, solemn, so Kai knows it’s important. Octavia lobs a pair of Spiderman underwear at his face.

“Be home by seven,” she calls after him as he leaves, and he waves a little, to let her know he’s heard her. “And keep your phone on!”

He thinks about texting her something dumb, like the letter W and nothing else, but texts cost thirty seconds each and he’s not sure how many minutes he has left for the month, so he doesn’t want to chance it.

Harper’s record store—creatively named Recorded—is only a few blocks from his apartment, but Bellamy drives, anyway. He drives as much as he can, whenever possible, always eager to take his car on the road. It’s a Toyota MR-2, from the eighties, and he bought it for a steal from Wick, back when he and Raven were still pseudo-dating. Bellamy’s pretty sure Raven used her feminine wiles or whatever, to get him a discount, but he isn’t about to complain.

Sure, the hood’s a little rusted in patches, like bald spots, and the passenger door doesn’t lock so he has to jerry-rig it with a corkscrew, and the exhaust manifold is old and faulty, so sometimes the whole interior smells like gas, but. It’s still a good car, and more importantly it’s _his_ car, and he loves it.

Plus, Harper likes to make him actual _mix tapes_ , with the little purple CD player she’s had since she was seven. Raven tried to hook his radio up so it could plug into his i-pod too, but it didn’t work, so he usually just grabs one of the 8tracks from the pile he has stashed in the glovebox, and pops it in. He has to use a folded up index card to keep it in place, but it still plays, and that’s what matters.

Bellamy parks in his usual spot in front of the store, and heads inside to find Harper sitting on the front counter, tuning her guitar, while Monroe sifts through all the Buddy Holly records they can find. Raven isn’t here, but that isn’t unusual; Raven likes to pretend she’s above things like friendship, even though Bellamy still isn’t sure _why_. Raven’s the _friendliest_ , and she doesn’t even try.

There’s a huge, home-made banner strung up on the front wall, that says 2 DAYS TILL FREEDOM in big, glittery letters. Harper wrote it, which explains the wording, and Monroe helped, which explains the glitter. A little bit more showers down every time the front door shuts; Bellamy’s been washing it out of his hair for weeks, now. They keep having to take it down, to change the date.

“Bell!” Harper calls, stretching out her legs and wiggling her bare toes so the red checkered nail polish glints in the light. “Come listen to my new single—it’s called _Your Blood Tastes Like Razers_.”

Bellamy frowns a little; her song titles have been getting progressively more emo, and he’s not sure if he should be worried. Usually she leans more towards Bar Brawl Girl Punk type stuff. “Let me guess—it’s about Echo.”

“ _Fuck_ Echo,” Harper spits, which basically means _yes_. Bellamy sighs.

“You know you’re going to have to stop writing hate songs about her, if you want to move on, right? This is number, like, forty-seven. It’s time.”

“Fifty-three,” she corrects, petulant, which means she knows he’s right, but she’s still going to fight him on it.

He sighs again and slides up one of the plastic side tables, where they pile up pamphlets advertising local garage sales and sports bars and dog walkers. There’s a bunch for some Mosque up on State Street, and he moves them over so he can sit down, before glancing over at Monroe. They’re wearing a pair of suspenders, which means it must be a boy day. They always wear headbands, when they identify as a girl. So far it’s been a fairly fool-proof system.

Monroe grins over at him, infectiously cheerful. “Bell, do you have any Graduation Resolutions?”

“Any what?”

“They’re like New Year’s resolutions,” Harper says, rolling her eyes because clearly she’s heard this explanation before. “But for graduation day, instead. Monroe’s trying to make it happen.”

“It’s _going_ to happen,” Monroe says, adamant. “I’ve already set up a Facebook page—it has like, fifteen likes.”

“Why,” Bellamy says, before Harper can say something snide about the Facebook thing. Harper hates all social media on principle; she thinks it’s just another facet of communism, taking over people’s lives. To be honest, Bellamy isn’t really sure that she’s _wrong_. “What’s your resolution?”

Monroe ticks them off on their fingers. “Get into fashion school, buy a strap-on with my own money so my grandparents don’t see the charge on their credit card bill.”

Bellamy snorts a little, and Harper tosses a balled-up receipt at their head. The shot goes wide, because Harper has terrible aim, but it’s the thought that counts, he guesses.

“What about you?” he asks, and regrets it immediately.

“Prove to Echo that I’m doing great without her, make her want me back so I can turn her down with a public speech, break the bitch’s heart like she broke mine, and get signed to a record label.”

“Cool,” Bellamy says. “Good priorities.”

Harper makes a face. “Bite me. Your turn.”

Bellamy grins, tugging the bag from his shoulders. It’s one of those shitty Nylon ones, that people use for dirty gym clothes, or shower stuff, with the drawstrings that always hang crooked. He opens it up and pulls out his yearbook from eighth grade, the year before his mom died, and flips to the front cover.

Octavia had been feeling nostalgic recently, each time she remembers he’s graduating soon, so she dug out the box of his mom’s scrapbooks from wherever O had stashed them—and his old yearbooks were in the same stack. He’d been flipping through this one idly, when something caught his eye.

He finds the passage, a little block of letters written in neat electric green cursive, and points to it, flicking the book up to show them.

“I’m going to ask out Clarke Griffin,” he says, grinning, and Monroe predictably gasps.

“The graveyard princess?” they ask, and Harper rolls her eyes.

“No, that other Clarke Griffin he knows,” she says, wry, and then turns on him. “But, yeah, I’m with Monroe on this one. You’re talking about _the_ Clarke Griffin—the girl who started taking college classes when she was fourteen. Who never skips class, even on Skip Day. Bell, she’s never even gone to one of Wick’s parties. I don’t think she knows how to _not_ be reading a book!”

“She isn’t always reading,” Bellamy says, and lets Monroe take the book from his hands, so they can better read the writing. “Sometimes she draws.”

Harper makes a big show of rolling her eyes _and_ her head at the same time, and Monroe shows her the message. Bellamy waits, a little nervous in spite of himself, because—he does _want_ their opinion on it. They’re both girls—well, Harper’s a girl, and Monroe’s a girl sometimes—so he figures they probably know better than him, about what girls might want.

Truthfully, he’d prefer Raven’s thoughts on the whole thing, since he knows she and Clarke are partners in their AP Chemistry class, so she at least knows her a little, and might have some insight, but. Raven’s not here, so he’ll have to settle.

Finally, they both look up, and Harper’s eyebrows get lost in the bandana she’s wearing around her head. “Seriously, this is what you’re basing this plan on? How old was she even when she _wrote_ this?”

Bellamy picks at his jeans a little, a nervous habit. “Twelve,” he admits. “She was a grade below me.”

It’s no secret, that he was held back in ninth grade, and it’s no secret _why_. Pretty much the whole town knows, and he’d learned pretty quickly to either come to terms with that, or to be perpetually pissed off. He’d tried the whole constant anger thing for a while, but as it turns out, that takes a lot more energy than he’s usually willing to spare.

“And you think this might still apply, five years later?”

Bellamy shrugs. “I always liked Clarke. And yeah, I think maybe she might like me too. A little.” He glances up at the banner. Nearly all the glitter has fallen off the F. “And besides—it’s graduation. That’s a big deal, right? And if she’s not interested, maybe we can be friends, but. It’s a resolution. It’s supposed to be, you know, big. And what’s bigger than asking out the princess?”

Harper clicks her tongue and sighs, shaking her head at him, which he’s not sure is fair. She was _ridiculous_ about Echo, both before and during the relationship, and even after, she spends most of her spare time plotting her ex-girlfriend’s demise. Bellamy’s just thinking about asking the girl he likes out for fro-yo, or something. It’s not the end of the world.

“I think it’s sweet,” Monroe offers. Harper grumbles _of course you do_ under her breath, and they all pretend not to hear. Monroe hands the book back to him, and he glances back down at the message without really meaning to. He’s been rereading it all day, since yesterday afternoon, really. Since he first saw it.

 _Bellamy, it’s Clarke from Honors Language Arts class. I really loved all your stories this year, and thanks for grading mine so nicely in class. I’ll miss you in my next one. Good luck in high school, even though I’m sure you won’t need it, since you’re so tall and cool already. Hopefully I’ll see you when I get there. Maybe we’ll have gym together or something, or we can eat lunch at the same table, if you want. I’ll say yes, if you ask to. Your friend, Clarke_.

She’s drawn a little smiley face, with freckles, which he thinks means it’s supposed to be him. He honestly feels a little bad he never noticed her words until now. He wishes he had; Clarke had been a pretty good friend to him in middle school, when he was going through a really shitty time. They hadn’t been _close_ or anything, just shared a few classes, and tended to sit next to each other at awards ceremonies, since everything was alphabetized. But she always let him copy her notes, when he got distracted and forgot to make his own, and she always doodled in the margins of his quizzes, when the teacher had them all grade each other’s. He used to hang them up on his bedroom wall when he got home, folding them so mostly only her art showed.

He also had an enormous crush on her back then, but that’s beside the point.

He wishes he’d seen her note earlier, and he wishes he’d taken her up on her offer. But better late than never is a phrase for a reason, and Bellamy found her phone number on the yellow pages website, after typing in their zip code and her last name.

“I’m going on record,” Harper declares, as Bellamy punches in the number. He should maybe call her privately, once he gets home, but Octavia likes to listen in on his phone calls because she’s fucking nosy, and he sort of wants to be with his friends, just in case she says no. “This is a terrible idea.”

“What’s a terrible idea?” Raven asks, and then grimaces, glaring up at the banner as a bunch of glitter rains down on her once the door swings shut.

“Bell’s going to ask out Clarke Griffin,” Monroe chirps, as Raven scowls, trying to dust herself off as best she can.

“Oh yeah, that’s a fucking _terrible_ idea,” she agrees, and shoots Bellamy a look somewhere between confused and suspicious. “Why are you asking out Clarke Griffin?”

“Because I want to,” he snaps. “Why is everyone so sure she’s going to turn me down? I’m a fucking catch.”

Raven reaches over to pat his head, only a little condescending. “Don’t worry, Blake, it’s not _you_ per se—Clarke doesn’t date people. It’s like, a rule she has or something.”

“I guess we’ll see,” he sniffs, pressing the _call_ button. Raven makes a face as it rings.

Someone picks up on the third ring, but it’s definitely not Clarke. “Hello?”

Bellamy’s brain stutters for a minute; he hadn’t expected this, and so now he’s not sure what to do. “Uh, hi, is Clarke there? Clarke Griffin?” He sees all three of them giving him matching unimpressed looks, and makes a face. He’d hoped she was going to say yes before, but now he _really_ hopes she says yes, just so he can rub it in their faces, because he’s fucking mature.

“No, she’s at her tennis practice,” the woman says, and Bellamy wishes he’d had the foresight to try and get Clarke’s cell number, so he wouldn’t be faced with this; asking her out, via her mom. That has got to be a whole different level of creepy, or at least weird, like he taxidermies roadkill in his basement for fun, or something. _Psycho_ -levels weird.

“Oh, uh, could you tell her Bellamy called?” he asks, wincing without really meaning to. Raven’s patting his head again, in sympathy, but she’s also trying hard not to laugh, so it doesn’t make him feel much better. “Bellamy Blake. I’m friends with Raven?”

“Raven Reyes?” the woman asks, to his surprise, and he glances at his friend, warily.

“Yeah.”

“Please tell her Abby says hello,” she says, suddenly sounding a whole lot more pleasant. “I’ll let Clarke know, when she gets home. Goodbye.”

“Uh, bye,” Bellamy hangs up, and shoots Raven a glare. “You didn’t tell me you knew her _mom_.”

Raven shrugs, frustratingly nonchalant, like she somehow didn’t know he could have _used_ that information. “You knew me and Clarke are friends.”

“Yeah, but not _you know her mom_ -type friends.”

Raven squints at him, incredulous, and then reaches up to flick him on the nose, like a bad dog. “What does that even mean?”

He swats her hand away and shrugs. “You’re just—closer than I thought, is all. Can you invite me to hang out with you guys or something?”

She snorts. “Yeah, no. No way.”

“What? Why not?”

“Because,” Raven sighs, a little exasperated, which he’s not really sure is fair. “Clarke’s last two exes were _horrible,_ so she doesn’t date anymore. And you’ve never dated at _all_ , and she shouldn’t be your guinea pig.”

Bellamy frowns. “I’ve dated.”

Raven levels him with a heavy stare, and he can _feel_ Harper and Monroe, pretending to file records as they’re clearly just listening in. “When in the world did you ever date someone, Blake?”

“There was, uh, Roma,” he decides. “And you, that one time.”

“You and Roma used to hook up semi-regularly at pep rallies,” Raven rolls her eyes. “And you and I got drunk and had a quickie in my step-mom’s car—not exactly ringing endorsements of boyfriend behavior.”

“Well fuck you too,” he says, mild, because she’s right and she knows it. “I can totally date. It’s not like it’s _difficult_. I’ll be the best boyfriend ever.”

“Whatever you say.” Raven pauses to glare up at the speakers, where _Smile Like You Mean It_ is whirring down on them. “Why the fuck are we listening to The Killers?” she demands. “Didn’t they die like, five years ago? Let them fucking rest.”

“They’re good,” Monroe defends, which means they must have picked it. Monroe only listens to bands like The Killers and The Kooks and Tame Impala when they’re feeling introspective about their masculinity. Every other day, they just switch on the Pop-140 Hits.

“You get next pick, Rave,” Harper says, playing peacemaker, because she doesn’t feel like cleaning up whatever Raven knocks down in her rage. She has a tendency to swing her cane around, when she gets worked up. She’s leveled a few record shelves in the past.

Raven makes a big show about it, but she always picks the same thing—the complete soundtrack from _Titan AE_. She’s still the only reason Bellamy even knows about that film, or the fact that _astro_ - _punk_ is a real and valid genre of music.

He gets home at seven-oh-three, just to be a dick. He and O live in the shitty apartment she and Atom moved into, after their mom kicked her out for getting knocked up. And then Atom decided living with his high school sweetheart and their kid was _too much commitment_ , and he skipped town. He still sends birthday cards for Kai, with fifty dollar bills in them and little blurbs updating them about his life. He’s working on a gas line, somewhere on the northeast coast, and he hasn’t gotten married or had any replacement kids or anything. Bellamy’s beginning to realize he probably never will; he’ll be one of those guys who’s permanently single, and fine with it.

He still hates him, obviously, on principle, no matter how nice he was when Bellamy was a kid. But he’d hate him even more, if he felt like he’d just left and traded Octavia in for a brand new model, one that didn’t come with stretch marks, or the baggage of a toddler.

“Some girl called for you,” Octavia says, and Bellamy swears. She shoots him a glare, and he winces, but the damage is done.

“ _Shit_ ,” Kai says, because he’s going through a phase where he only ever repeats the worst things Bellamy has ever said, just so O will hate him, he’s pretty sure. The kid has to have an evil masterplan or something. “ _Shit shit shit_.”

“That’s a grown-up word, buddy,” Octavia says, setting out the bowls of Kraft mac and cheese, the kind shaped like Spongebob. “You can only say it in ten years.”

“Sixteen isn’t grown up,” Bellamy says, mild, because he knows why she says it. He knows how uncomfortable she is, with the idea of treating teenagers like little kids, since _she_ was a teenager when she _had_ a kid. He knows she’s sort of always worried about it, in the way some people are always worried about the economy, or weight loss. The kind of thing that’s always in the back of their mind, eating away, so normal and constant that they almost forget it’s even there.

“If you’re old enough to drive a car and be emancipated, you’re old enough to swear,” O recites, like he knew she would, and then shoves him in the back of the head, even though she has to stretch up to reach it. He’s shot up over her in the last couple of years, which he still brags about whenever he can. She pokes him in the side. “Also old enough to be getting calls from strange girls, apparently.”

“God, shut up, don’t you have a child to feed?”

Bellamy’s pretty sure he’s avoided having to explain the whole Clarke situation, until Octavia corners him after putting Kai to bed. Bellamy’s washing the dishes, because if he doesn’t then O will just rinse them all in hot water and call them clean, and he’s wearing a pair of ridiculously yellow enormous rubber gloves, because the dish soap makes his skin peel.

There’s no escaping his sister, when she comes, eyes narrowed and shoulder set back for war. He might as well just surrender. He might be bigger, but Octavia fights fucking _dirty_ —she scratches, and bites, and tickles him behind the kneecap whenever possible, which always reduces him to mush.

“So,” she hedges, wrinkling her nose at the dishwater because it smells like lemons, which are her least favorite. “Tell me about your girlfriend.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” he says, honest, and Octavia kicks him in the shin. “She’s _not_ —she’s a girl, who’s a friend.”

“You have like, three friends,” O argues, frowning. “And I know them all. I don’t know this girl. She has a weird name—Clint, or something. Cliff. Clay. It’s a boy’s name.”

“Clarke,” Bellamy corrects. “And it’s a _unisex_ name,” he flicks some soapy water at her. “God, O, don’t be so close-minded.”

Octavia rolls her eyes dramatically and huffs a little. “Whatever, loser. What’s the deal?”

Bellamy heaves a sigh, so she knows he’s only doing this out of the goodness of his heart, because he knows that between her full-time job at the gym, and raising Kai, she’s still living her social life through him, which has been a largely disappointing experience for her. So he’ll toss her a bone, just this once.

“Not much,” he shrugs, purposefully vague. “Her name’s Clarke Griffin, we go to school together. We met in eighth grade, we hung out a lot but don’t anymore. She’s cool.”

“Why don’t you hang out anymore?”

Bellamy shrugs, noncommittal. He hadn’t _meant_ to stop hanging out with Clarke, but when he was in high school, she was still in junior high, and by the time she got to ninth grade he was in a bunch of remedial classes and elbows-deep in some seriously intense self-loathing. They didn’t have anything in common anymore, and he only ever saw her in the halls. She’d still wave, and she might have even tried to talk to him at some point, but he honestly can’t remember. He doesn’t remember a lot about those first years.

But he remembers eighth grade, remembers studying with her in the library after class. They had a comic going, with shitty storylines that he mostly stole from those paperback _Star Wars_ books that O’s dad left lying around the house. He wrote all the dialogue and plots, while Clarke did the art, and it was honestly pretty bad, but. It was theirs, and they were fond of it, and they’d work on it in between study halls. He can’t actually remember much of the comic itself, but he’s pretty sure it was called _Space-Walker_ , or something hokey like that.

“We just don’t. I, uh. Was hoping to change that.”

He glances over to find Octavia staring at him, looking severely unimpressed. “What?” he asks, defensive, and she sighs, shifting her hips the way she does when she’s annoyed with his life choices.

“ _Only you_ would decide to go after your childhood crush _two days_ before graduation,” she says, shaking her head. But she’s smiling a little, in spite of herself, so she can’t actually be _that_ mad about it. She’s probably secretly excited, going over every single nineties rom-com she’s ever seen, deciding exactly how and when he’ll make some Grand Romantic Gesture, to win Clarke over.

“No way,” he says, stern, raising a sudsy rubber finger to point at her, so she knows he’s serious. He’s dripping water on the floor, and O makes a face.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I _mean_ it, O,” he warns. “This is _my_ love life—I don’t need you messing around with it.”

Octavia schools her face like the professional she is. She could be a conman, seriously, or one of those women who goes to casinos and counts the cards, distracting everyone with her shiny dress, or by blowing on their dice.

“Not even to give you Clarke’s message?” she asks, all fake innocence, and there’s a heavy moment where neither of them move.

And then the moment’s over, and Bellamy spends the next fifteen minutes chasing his sister around the house before he finally catches her, and threatens to throw her in the dishwater if she doesn’t fork over the post-it note.

She does, of course; Octavia’s like a cat, and has an extreme aversion to water. Apparently she nearly drowned in the ocean once, when he was too little to remember, and the undertow dragged her down.

“Fine,” she declares, and he sets her down. She presses the sticky part of the note to his forehead. It immediately flutters to the floor, because the stick’s covered in lint and Cheerio’s crumbs, from her pocket. “Go have your John Hughes moment, or whatever.”

“Like you won’t be listening in,” he points out, but she just hums as she walks down the hall, not even bothering to deny it. He could call Clarke on his cell again, but he doesn’t want to waste the minutes, and their landline has free calls to anywhere within the U.S.

He glances at the note as he listens to the tone ring. Octavia’s handwriting has always been impressively bad, some weird mixture of half-cursive and chicken scratch, with a dozen misspelled words that he’s sure are done on purpose. It says _girl called for u bell. said to tell u “about time.” ???????_

He’s still grinning when he hears a dull _click_ from the other end of the line, and a voice, low enough to make him shiver. “Hello?”

“Hey,” he has to clear his throat, embarrassingly, and bites back a wince. It’s like seventh grade all over again. “Uh, Clarke? It’s Bellamy.”

“Bellamy,” she says, and it sounds like she’s smiling. Just a little. “Hi.” There’s a rustling, like she’s switching the phone to her other ear. “Sorry I missed your call earlier.”

“Sorry I missed yours.”

She hums, and there’s a moment where neither of them know what to say, conversation gone stilted and awkward. He tries to picture what she looks like right now—it’s after dinner, so she’s probably still dressed. Sitting at her desk maybe, or on her bed, surrounded by pillows and light colors, like beige and pink and minty green.

He’s been to her house, just twice; once when they were kids. She’d had a birthday party and set a little invitation on his desk in class, one of those cardstock ones sold at Party City, with Elizabeth Swan on the front, detailing the date and time, and number so he could RSVP. He’d assumed she’d invited their whole class, to be nice, but when he got there it was just the two of them and Wells, her next-door-neighbor. They played Scrabble on her bedroom floor, and ate some of the expensive Haagen-Dazs ice cream that Bellamy’s mom could never afford. Her room was pretty, like her, with a bunch of fancy-looking paintings hung up on the walls, and matching wooden furniture.

The second time, he was in ninth grade, the first time around, and Clarke was turning fourteen. He was the oldest one there, and she really _had_ invited her whole class, plus Bellamy, and the teenagers all sequestered themselves in the living room to watch the huge collection of horror movies Clarke had lined up on the shelf. It was near Halloween, and she _did_ live in a funeral home.

But then when it got late, some of the others wanted to play Truth or Dare, which quickly turned into just Dare, because everyone was very obviously lying whenever anyone asked something personal.

It’s one of the few memories he still has from that year, everyone ganging up on Wells, the principle’s son and forever-teacher’s-pet. They all dared him to go out naked in the graveyard across the street, and he didn’t want to. They started calling him names, pretty brutal ones, for a bunch of thirteen-year-old’s, and Wells cried, so they made fun of that too.

Some girl—he doesn’t remember her name, barely remembers the blurred edges of her face, even—tossed her soda on Wells’s sweater, the nice kind he always wore, that could only be hand-washed.

Bellamy remembers Clarke going harder than he’d ever seen her, so serious it was scary, ordering everyone to leave. He remembers her looking to him, for support, and he remembers turning away like a coward. He didn’t know what she could possibly want from him; he was barely holding himself together at that point. He hadn’t even wanted to go to that party, but O had insisted, positive he needed to just _put himself out there_ or something.

But instead he’d walked away from the last real friend he had left, and waited for O to come pick him up, on the sidewalk.

That’s the real reason they stopped hanging out, he knows. He likes to pretend they just fell out of contact, just grew apart the way people do sometimes, and that’s true but—the truth is, he’s the reason.

He wonders if she’s remembering that night, too. She hasn’t tried to bring it up, and she doesn’t mention it now. “So, did you need something?”

Bellamy’s yanked back to the present with a jolt. “Huh?”

Clarke sounds amused. “When you called, did you need something? Notes for AP Gov?”

It’s the only class they have together, now; last semester they shared Statistics too, but they didn’t sit close enough for that to really matter. And even though they share a table in AP Gov, they don’t actually speak.

“Oh, no. Uh, listen—I know this is, like, really sudden, but I was wondering if you’d like to go out?”

“Go out where?”

“Just—go out. With me. Wick’s having his annual _Fuck Yeah, Graduation!_ party this weekend. You should go.”

“With you,” she clarifies, like she’s making sure, like she could somehow think he’s not serious.

“With me,” he confirms, shuffling his feet, nervous in spite of himself. He wipes his hands on his jeans for literally no reason—it’s not like she’ll be able to tell that they’re sweaty.

“Bellamy Blake,” she says, and there’s that grin again, but she sounds a little nervous, too. “Are you asking me out on a date?”

“Yeah,” he says, because there’s no point in denying it. And anyway, she hasn’t said _no_. “Are you saying yes?”

“I am.”

Bellamy ducks his head, grinning down at his dark canvas shoes, where the toes have started to pull away from the rubber soles. “Cool. That’s, uh—great. I’ll pick you up at seven?”

Clarke hums, agreeably. “What day is it?”

“Oh, fuck, uh—Saturday? After graduation.” Only he could ask a girl out on a date, without telling her the actual fucking _date_ , first.

“Cool,” she chirps. “See you tomorrow, Bellamy.”

“Yeah,” he wets his lips, mostly to keep his mouth from splitting open, he’s grinning so hard. _She said yes_. “See you.”

Octavia doesn’t last five minutes once he’s hung up the phone, before she’s draped against the wall in front of him, looking positively smug. She’s got a mint julep face mask on that makes her look like a weird and edible alien, and her hair’s up in a knot on her head, but she _still_ manages to gloat.

“Fuck off,” he says, mild, too relieved to really feel annoyed. He’s going on a date with _Clarke Griffin_. It should maybe feel weird, since he sort of wanted to marry her when he was twelve, and he hasn’t actually spoken to her in four years, but. Mostly, he’s just really excited.

“I can’t believe she said yes,” O says, cheerful. “You sound like even _more_ of a loser on the phone.” She lowers her voice a few octaves, doing her best Bellamy impression. “ _Uh, so, Clarke um, you wanna maybe, I dunno, hold hands and cuddle and stuff? I’m totally cool. Everything’s cool. Cool cool._ ” She makes a face and mimes vomiting. Bellamy stares at her, affronted.

“Okay, first of all, I don’t even sound like that. Second of all, you are weirdly invested in my love life.”

“That’s because until five seconds ago, you didn’t _have_ a love life,” she defends, reaching up to ruffle his hair a little, like she used to do when he was tiny, and she could lord her older sibling rights over him. “I’m happy for you, Bell.”

“Don’t be happy yet,” he says, ducking away down the hall. He nearly trips over a small landmine of those plastic Beyblade things from McDonald’s, that Kai collects and then leaves all over the place. “She hasn’t actually hung out with me since she was in middle school. She probably thinks I’m still cool.”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure she doesn’t,” O smirks. “Since you were never cool in the first place.”

He flips her off over his shoulder, but he’s still grinning for the rest of the night.

The next day is a Friday, and while most of the seniors were just planning to skip—since honestly _who_ actually goes to class the day before graduation?—Bellamy still has to show up to first period AP Gov, because his teacher is Satan, and has threatened to fail anyone who doesn’t.

Clarke’s there already, perched at their table, looking soft and pretty like she always does, if a little sleep deprived. But she beams over at him pretty much immediately, which turns his heart into a fist in his chest.

“Morning,” she says around a yawn, squinting like she’s annoyed at her body for interrupting her. He laughs, sliding into his seat.

“Hey.” He slouches a little, stretching his legs out until their ankles are touching. He’s honestly expecting everything to feel stranger than it does, but really it just feels like he’s thirteen again, passing notes and shitty comic strips to each other in the library.

They don’t actually pass notes or talk at all, since Clarke is a teacher’s dream, even on the last day of high school. She spends the hour doodling in the margins of her notes—but she’s still _taking notes_. They’re watching a documentary, which normally Bellamy would be all for, except this one is about Russia, in Russian, with faulty subtitles and those squiggly lines erupting onscreen every few seconds, so it’s hard to really enjoy.

Eventually the period ends, and while Bellamy has accounting, where he mostly just dicks around in Paint, and races Miller in the wheeled chairs, Clarke has AP Chemistry. He’s pretty sure she’s taken like six different AP classes this year, and he has no idea how she found time to sleep, in between it all.

“What are you doing?” she asks, as he takes her bag from her shoulder and throws it over his, instead. It’s one of those sturdy cloth messenger kinds, a pale beige, with lots of paint stains and charcoal smudged on the bottom, that makes it look lived-in.

“I’m carrying your books to class,” he says, and she laughs at him.

“You’re such a dork,” she says, but she sounds pretty fond about it.

“I’m _chivalrous_ ,” Bellamy sniffs, and she laughs at him all over again. Frankly, he’d feel insulted about it, if she wasn’t so cute.

He drops her off at the doorway, and she squeezes his wrist before she takes her bag back and heads inside, where he can see Raven miming throwing up. Bellamy flips her off and then floats to his class in a daze.

He hadn’t known, really, that he could be this gone over a girl. He’s heard about it, the racing heart and butterflies, but he’d chalked it up to bad romance novels and maybe food poisoning.

But he’d also had a huge crush on Clarke when they were kids, because he didn’t really have a lot of friends, and she was nice to him, and pretty. And she’s apparently still nice and pretty, so there’s that. He’s had—if not girlfriends, then at least _girls_ over the years. He hasn’t been pining after his middle school crush or anything, but. He also hasn’t actively tried to get over her at all, so now there are all these emotions that he’d mostly forgotten about, cropping back up to the surface, all warm excitement.

He finds her again outside after school, chatting with Monty about something, which—if he’d known she knows _Monty_ , he just would have tried to get an in through him. Monty wouldn’t have said no. He’s not sure the word _no_ is in Monty’s vocabulary.

“Hey, princess,” he says, leaning over her, and then immediately winces. It’s what he used to call her when they were little, when they’d pretend her enormous house was an enchanted castle. But it’s also what the other kids would call her, spitting and bitter about how she had all the cool gel pens and 125-crayon boxes and, later, actual money for clothes and a cellphone.

Bellamy may not have had many friends in middle school, but Clarke somehow had even _less_. He knows it’s different, now—knows she’s constantly _doing_ things; painting a mural in the school cafeteria or playing tennis at the country club or helping her mom at the funeral home or grading all the AP Bio quizzes _just for fun_. He’s pretty sure she’s gotten like, seventeen full-rides to different colleges, which he’s actively not jealous of. He knows how hard she works, knows she’s earned every single one of them, and he knows that he fucked up his own shot by not caring about school when it mattered.

But it still sucks, a little, that Clarke gets to leave while he doesn’t, while he wastes away in their hometown just like seventy-five percent of the rest of the population. And maybe he’ll go to community college or take classes online, and maybe he’ll even do well in them, but he still can’t afford a University, or any sort of _good_ higher education. And he still has no idea what he even wants to do.

If Clarke has any sort of lingering grudge against the nickname, she doesn’t show it, instead turning to offer a smile that has him putting an arm around her shoulders. She slots into his side, normal, like she’s been doing it for years. If he couldn’t feel her back tense a little, he wouldn’t even think she was nervous about it.

Monty’s looking between the pair of them, clearly amused, and Bellamy sees Monroe waving at him from the end of the street. He waves back, gesturing for them to leave without him, and they roll their eyes before turning around.

When Bellamy turns back, Monty’s just leaving, and Clarke tips her head back against his arm, to grin up at him. “What’s up?”

“Nothing. What are you doing tonight?”

Clarke wrinkles her nose a little, and he grins. “Going over the speeches with Wells,” she says, making a face. She and Wells are Salutatorian and Valedictorian, respectively, and each of them is slotted to give a speech at the graduation ceremony. She worries her lip a little, glancing at him, like she’s expecting him to be _mad_. “Raincheck?”

“Definitely,” he agrees. “Come on, I’ll drive you home.”

“Such a gentleman,” she teases, but she nestles into him even more as they walk towards his shitty car, parked at the very end of the lot so he doesn’t have to risk other cars touching it.

“I’m chivalrous,” he says. “I keep telling you.”

 

“So what’s up with your girlfriend?” O demands. They’re eating take out in the living room, because it’s Friday, so they just hold their cartons over the little rickety fold-out TV trays, and watch _Zach Bell_ , which is currently Kai’s favorite.

“What about her?” Bellamy hedges, to be an asshole, and Octavia glares. His phone beeps and he grins down—Clarke’s been texting him every few minutes, complaining about how bored she is, about how stuffy their speeches are, and sending him pictures of her cat Styx, who keeps trying to eat the pages.

“She’s great,” he says, and he knows his grin is too wide and messy and obvious, but he can’t help it. His sister does not look impressed. “What did you expect? It’s been less than a day.”

O huffs a little, and stretches her leg across the couch to kick him in the thigh for good measure. “I don’t know,” she whines. “ _Something_ —honestly, I’m surprised it’s even lasted _this_ long.”

Bellamy snorts. “I like how much faith you obviously have in me.”

“I’m your number one fan, Bell,” she says, and he even knows she means it. “But just because _I_ get you, doesn’t mean other girls will. Besides; I have to like you. We’re related. It’s obligation, that’s it.”

“Good to know,” he says, and goes to swipe one of her spring rolls, but she passes him the whole carton, instead. It’s a gesture, he knows; Octavia _loves_ spring rolls. He once saw her threaten to gouge a woman’s eye out with her own chopsticks, over spring rolls, and he honestly thought she might do it. He still does.

“You’re still coming tomorrow, right?” he asks, just to make sure she didn’t get stuck with some last-minute shift change. She’s a kickboxing instructor at a twenty-four hour gym, and it’s happened before.

“Of course,” she says, like he’s an idiot for thinking otherwise. “I’ll have my camera out and everything, ready to get a picture just in case you trip on your robe and fall.”

“Thanks,” he says, dry, and she pats his shoulder affectionately.

“It’s for posterity, Bell. Your future grandchildren will thank me.”

Bellamy doesn’t trip on his robe and fall, but he does get a little tangled in the skirt because it’s an inch too long. His sister doesn’t get a picture, but she does still make fun of him for it, as sisters do.

“You’re lucky you’re an only child,” he tells Kai, and O hits him.

He sits next to Harper during the ceremony, because the seating plan is alphabetized and her last name is _Cappinegro_ , which is how they became friends in the first place—they’ve been seated side by side for school stuff since the third grade. Monroe’s just a row ahead of them and while Raven would usually be stuck all the way at the back, today she’s up front as the _second_ Salutatorian, because as it turns out she and Jaha have the exact same GPA. Bellamy’s pretty sure she threw the race a little though, so she wouldn’t have to give a speech.

Wells gives his first, and it’s pretty good; perfunctory. Very _Remember the Titans_. He talks a little about following their dreams, even if no one else thinks they’re big enough, and it’s actually a little moving.

Then Clarke stands up, and basically shit-talks the entire Department of Education, before telling everyone to spend less time studying and more time living life and making friends. It’d resemble some Big Speech from a Disney Channel film, but she’s a little too angry for that. Once she’s done, glaring out over the crowd to really get her point across, there’s a long moment of silence. The adults in the audience start clapping, stilted, like they don’t know what else to do. But Bellamy and Harper and the rest of the kids go fucking _wild_.

Bellamy finds Clarke in the football field after the caps have been thrown. He couldn’t find his, after, but he doesn’t really mind; it’s blue canvas cloth and cardboard, with a tassel made of yarn. He’s not sentimental over it.

Clarke’s off to one side, chatting with Wells and Raven and an older woman, who he sort of recognizes as Mrs. Griffin. She looks a little older, with pepper-gray streaks in her hair, and she’s not as tall as he remembers. He almost doesn’t even go over, but then Clarke catches sight of him and _beams_ , like he’s her favorite thing, ever. It’s impossible for him to leave, after that.

“Hey, Reyes,” he grins, tossing an arm around her neck in a fake chokehold. Raven rolls her eyes and shoves him off. “I’m proud of you.”

“Bite me, Blake,” she says, mild, and then flicks her eyes between him and Clarke knowingly, completely unsubtle.

When he glances down, she’s looking up, and he grins, a little softer. “Nice speech.”

Clarke immediately goes bright pink, which is kind of what he was going for. “Thanks. Nice hat head.”

“It’s because I’m worth it,” he says seriously, and she laughs, before turning back to her mom.

“Mom, you remember Bellamy?”

He keeps his face schooled while Mrs. Griffin eyes him up and down. “Yes, of course. It’s nice to see you again.”

“You too, Mrs. Griffin.”

Clarke and Raven snort simultaneously. Only Wells doesn’t make fun of him, which means Wells is now his favorite. “Your speech was good too,” he tells him, and Wells looks amused. They’d never really been friends, not like Bellamy and Clarke were.

“Thanks,” he glances at Clarke. “I should’ve known she’d show me up, though.”

“Why do you think I didn’t even bother?” Raven says, and Clarke turns on her, affronted.

“You said you didn’t want to write one!”

“Clarke,” Mrs. Griffin says, interrupting. “I’ll wait by the car.” She offers the rest of them a polite smile each—it warms a little for Raven, which Bellamy tries not to feel jealous about. “Congratulations to you all.”

She heads off, walking carefully over the grass in a pair of classy pumps. Every time Bellamy sees her, she looks ready for a funeral, which—well, it sort of makes sense, but it’s still a little unnerving. She always seems like she’s just _waiting_ for someone to drop.

Bellamy glances over to where O’s talking with the school counselor, a heavy-looking guy named Lincoln. He’s got a buzz cut and a ton of tattoos, is retired military, and everyone’s pretty convinced that he’s killed _at least_ three people. Maybe more.

He’s also a regular at O’s gym, which was pretty mortifying for Bellamy at first, but he’s since gotten used to seeing his school counselor shirtless in a pair of gym shorts and gloves. He’s pretty sure it’s some sort of strategy, to try to date Octavia. Kai’s currently poking his enormous thigh with a stick.

“Is that your sister?” Clarke asks, and Bellamy turns to find Raven and Wells have wandered off somewhere, probably to give them some attempt at privacy. It doesn’t really work of course—their high school is relatively small, and they’re both pretty well-known, so the other seniors keep stopping to say hi or ask after college or congratulate Clarke on her speech.

“Yeah, and that’s Kai, my nephew.”

Clarke grins. “He’s grown up a bit. The last time I saw him, he was just a baby.”

“Now he’s a small monster,” Bellamy says. “He dominates all the other little kids at the gym.”

As they watch, Kai takes his stick and jabs Lincoln in the crotch with it. O snatches it away, but the damage is done, and Bellamy doesn’t even bother to bite back his grin. He doesn’t need to intimidate his sister’s new boyfriend; the kid’s got it covered.

When Bellamy looks back at her, he finds her studying his face, eyes bright and serious. “I’m glad you’re happy again,” she says, and the words feel like a sucker punch to his stomach.

It takes a minute for his throat to start working again, but she waits, without making it feel like she’s waiting. She wraps his hand up in hers without a word. “Me too,” he chokes out, and he wonders how much time he’s wasted, when he should have been spending it with Clarke Griffin.

“Come on,” she chirps, tugging him by the hand towards the parking lot. For a second, he thinks they might be headed towards her mom’s fancy Benz, and that she’s going to kidnap him before the party. Honestly, he wouldn’t even complain.

“Where are we going?”

“ _I’m_ walking _you_ to your car,” she says, smug, and grins at him. “You’re not the only one who can be _chivalrous_.”

Bellamy laughs and tugs his hand back so he can lay his arm around her shoulders. She settles right in, like she belongs there. “Lead the way, princess.”

 

“I can’t actually be in love with Clarke Griffin, right?” he asks Raven. They’re in his room getting ready, because her step-mom means well but is ultimately smothering. She’d want to take a dozen pictures of _their process_ with one of those disposable cameras—even though Bellamy and Raven’s process for most things generally involves him laying upside down on his mattress while Raven throws stuff around his room and talks an endless amount of shit about everything.

“Of course you’re fucking in love with Clarke Griffin,” Raven says, without bothering to look over. She’s rifling through his closet with her cane, making faces at all of his clothes, like they offend her. Bellamy wouldn’t say Raven’s _good_ at fashion, but she’s found what works for her—basketball shorts and tight Hane’s tank tops and skin-tight jeans with oil stains—while Bellamy just sort of takes the _throw on whatever’s moderately clean_ approach. “You’ve been in love with her since you were eleven.”

“Twelve,” he corrects mildly. “I didn’t meet her till seventh grade.”

Raven just shrugs. “Semantics. What matters is, you’re in love with her, and you’ve literally waited until the last fucking minute to tell her—because you’re an _idiot_.”

Bellamy frowns, because he’s not really sure if that’s a fair assessment. He waited because he was so sure she wanted nothing to do with him, and because he was busy trying to actually graduate and help O make rent each month and babysitting his nephew while she worked. It’s not like he didn’t tell Clarke on purpose—he’d hardly even thought of her in the last four years.

Except, that’s not really true. She always seemed to pop up during those hazy in-between hours, when he was slipping into sleep. He’d try to map out what his life would be like, if he still had her as a friend. Bellamy’s done a lot of shit he regrets in the last four years but the biggest, even more than failing the ninth grade, is still losing Clarke. He really could have used her, to be honest. Sure, he has Raven now, and Harper and Monroe, but Clarke is the kind of friend who just inexplicably _helps_ , just by being, and he’d needed that.

“Okay, yeah,” he grants. “But that doesn’t mean I’m _in love with her_ , right? I could just really like her a lot.”

Raven turns to give him a very unimpressed look, and then pokes him in the knee with her cane. “Bellamy Blake, you are in rom-com-love with Clarke Griffin, and if you break her heart I swear to god I’ll break your face.”

Bellamy swats her cane off his leg, affronted. “You were my friend first,” he grumbles. “Shouldn’t you be giving her the big-brother talk?”

“I already did,” Raven shrugs, like it’s nothing, and pointedly ignores his grin. “It was a lot like this one, except more reasonable, because Clarke’s not a fucking idiot.”

Raven tosses a pair of dark jeans and his least-worn t-shirt over, so they land on his face. “Now get dressed,” she barks, heading for the door. “We have to be there in twenty minutes, and I don’t want you to embarrass me.”

“I love you too,” he coos, and she flips him off, before slamming the door so hard the hinges rattle.

Kyle Wick is kind of a household name in their town—he runs the only car garage that isn’t an Advanced Auto Parts, and in his downtime he likes to set out all the million pieces of junk and old furniture he owns out on his lawn, and sell them to passersby. Half the stuff for sale on the local Craigslist page, is from him. He lives somewhat in the middle of town, in a nice enough neighborhood and a long, narrow house that looks like somebody took it by both ends and stretched.

Wick’s also well-known because of his parties. He has at least ten a year, and goes out each time, but his annual _Fuck Yeah, Graduation!_ bashes are always the best. No one’s really sure when _Wick_ actually graduated, but they’re pretty sure he’s somewhere in his mid-to-late-twenties, and anyway it doesn’t really matter; he’s old enough to buy a metric ton of booze, set up an enormous sound system in his house, and invite all of the year’s local graduates over to get drunk and celebrate this milestone in their lives.

Of course, he also blatantly does not care if the rest of the high schoolers show up too, so Bellamy’s been a regular for the last four years. Along with Raven, who’s stayed sort-of friends with Wick after whatever semblance of a relationship they had crumbled. He knows it was mostly physical, and that it was mostly Wick pushing Raven for more, and even though Raven’s assured them there are no sides to the break up, it’s still hard for him to really _like_ Wick, anymore. Raven’s seventeen, which is over the age of consent in their state, but it still feels sleazy to think about.

He drives Raven home first, and then sticks in the playlist Harper made him called NIKE, named after the goddess not the company, although she said it could be both. It’s a lot of hard rock, pump-up music, the kind O plays at the gym a lot.

The music does its job—Bellamy’s banging his hands on the steering wheel as he pulls up to the funeral home, feeling more optimistic than he probably should.

He only gets to knock with the enormous, lion-shaped brass knocker once before Clarke’s opening the door, looking perfect in a white sundress with little blue butterflies all over the skirt. Her hair’s all soft, messy curls around her face, and she’s wearing some sort of sparkly headband that looks like a tiara.

She used to wear dresses all the time when they were kids, in middle school. All different colors, all cute and soft-looking, fit for a picnic lunch on the church’s lawn. But by the time she showed up at high school, she’d changed her style. She still looked nice in blue jeans and those tight button-down plaid shirts, though. Clarke always looked nice.

“Hey,” she says, tucking one of the dozen stray curls back behind her ear. She looks sort of nervous, and Bellamy realizes he’s still just staring stupidly at her, on the front porch.

“You’re gorgeous,” he blurts, and almost takes it back, but then she flushes all the way down her neck and chest, or at least what he can see of it from the dress’s neckline, which is a fair amount. He snaps his eyes back up to her tiara, which seems safer.

“You’re not too bad yourself,” Clarke says, and then smirks a little, which.

He might actually die before the party’s over. He might die before they get to the party at all—it seems like a real possibility. If she keeps looking up at him through her lashes like this, mouth crooked and pink, he really will.

Wick’s out front with Mille when they finally nab a parking space, and make their way up the front lawn, which means Bellamy’s actually obligated to stop and say hi. He actually _likes_ Miller, and he knows he got a baseball scholarship up at MSU, so he should at least heckle him about the Midwest while he still has the chance.

Clarke follows him, fingers still laced with his, and at first he thinks it’s because she’s new to the scene, and nervous about branching off, but then she gives Miller a conspiratorial grin.

“I heard you actually passed Euro-Lit,” she teases, “Even though you did almost nothing for the end-of-year project.” He scoffs.

“Hi to you too, Griffin,” He says, wry. “And I think you mean even though you took over that project like a tiny, blonde dictator.” He nods over at Bellamy. “Blake.”

“You know not everyone’s in JROTC,” Clarke says, apparently unoffended by the dictator comment. “You can call us by our first names.”

“He has commitment issues,” Bellamy explains. Miller just rolls his eyes and takes a pull from his beer.

“Blake!” Wick calls, finally noticing them from where he’s off to the side, chatting with a few of the newly graduated seniors. He’s wearing one of those hats with the beer cans attached, with crazy straws leading from the cans straight to Wick’s mouth, like a pair of very skinny, plastic walrus tusks. “Guess who you are, tonight!”

He’s entirely too enthusiastic for Bellamy’s comfort, and as per usual, he’s dressed up as the high school mascot; a giant, old and stained lion onesie—he’s clearly kept the mane-wig off, because it interfered with his beer-hat.

Bellamy shares a glance with Clarke, who looks amused but uncertain, and he tightens his grip on Clarke’s hand. “No,” he tells Wick, firm, like he’s disciplining a dog. It’s really the only way to get through to him. “No way—I have a date.”

“And she will thank you for your sacrifice,” Wick chirps, not missing a beat. He leans forward to kiss the back of Clarke’s hand, and some of the beer spills out of his right can, splashing on the dead grass.

Bellamy looks towards Miller for help, but he’s gone, probably having seen Monty and made his escape. “Find another key-master,” he tells Wick, final, but Wick just smacks an enormous foam paw on his shoulder, and from the other one, drops a pillow case filled with jangling metal into Bellamy’s hand.

“Look around, Blake. Would you really trust any of these other mooks with this responsibility?”

Bellamy fights the urge to look—he really does—but the sad truth is that after all these years, Wick knows exactly how to sell to him. Everyone around them is either already drunk, or nearly so, and most are under twenty-one. There’s no way he’d trust them to make sure everyone gave their keys up, and a bad key-master is how drunk drivers happen. It’s not like there’s a bouncer at the door, ready to card people. The key-master is really the only thing they’ve got.

Bellamy heaves a sigh, which by now Wick knows means he’s won this, and he pumps a single huge paw into the air and cheers. He throws his head back with the effort, and a can topples off, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“What’s a key-master?” Clarke asks, yelling to be heard over the crowd, which is made up of drunk and impressionable teenagers, who have decided to join in Wick’s cheering even though they probably don’t even know why.

“He’s playing mama bear for the night,” Raven explains, making her way up to them. Bellamy glances up to see Wells following just half a step behind, looking awkward and nervous, wearing one of his thinner fancy sweaters. He keeps picking at the sleeves, like he’s not sure if he should keep them rolled up or not.

“He has to make sure everyone puts their keys in the sack before they start drinking,” Raven says. “And at the end of the night, he hands them all out to the designated drivers, so no one’s drunk behind the wheel. It’s a pretty good system.”

“It’s a fool-proof system,” Wick says, defensive, and Raven rolls her eyes.

“It’s a _pretty good system_. Anyway, you better say goodbye to your boyfriend tonight, because you probably won’t see him till the morning.”

“It won’t be that long,” Bellamy grumbles, and then sticks the pillow case under Raven’s nose. It’s an old floral pattern, with yellow water stains that look like misshapen petals all over the edge. Raven tosses her keys in with the others, and loops her arm through Clarke’s.

“Don’t worry, Blake,” she grins, only a _little_ feral. “I’ll take care of your girlfriend.”

Bellamy frowns as he watches them leave. That’s twice that she referred to him and Clarke as a couple, and he’s not sure if Clarke’s okay with it. If she’s bothered, he can’t tell. Wells trails after them, still clearly out of place, but Raven just barks at him to keep up, like she would anyone. Bellamy’s not really sure when they became friends, but he’s betting it has something to do with him and Clarke—like they’re teaming up, to get them together or something, like in one of those teen movies from the nineties.

He loses sight of them once they go into the house, and anyway he has to start taking his job seriously, hunting down each sixteen-year-old and up, with a keychain dangling from their belt loop or the strap of their purse. Some of them put up a fight at first, but most of them know the drill, and anyway Bellamy’s pretty well-known as that kid that part-times at the kickboxing gym, so none of them fight him for very long.

Clarke’s always there, right in his periphery, each time he moves onto a new part of the house or the backyard, he sees a flash of gold curls and white fluttery dress, and he sees her, chatting and laughing with these people like she’s known them her whole life. He’s a little bit jealous, of course, that they get to spend this time with her, while he’s arguing about the Polynesian War with some plastered sophomore who refuses to relinquish his keys, but mostly he’s just happy for her. He knows she didn’t really get this, in school. She was too busy studying or practicing or training, to really go to parties or even the Senior Bowling Day they had just last week. He’s glad she’s getting it, now.

“Man, _I’m telling you_ , it was the f—the _fucking_ _last empire,_ the kid slurs, and then plants headfirst into Wick’s rhododendrons. Bellamy sighs and bends down, rolling him onto his side, and then rifles through his pockets, dropping the keys in his sack.

 

Clarke keeps looking up to find Bellamy glancing over, like he’s checking up on her. She ducks to hide her grin each time, but she’s pretty sure he sees. He’s exactly how she remembers him being in middle school—sweet, and doting. Once Bellamy Blake cared about something, he cared with everything he had. It’s nice to see he didn’t lose that.

She turns back to the boy who’s babbling on about the new _Star Wars_ movie—she’s pretty sure his name is Jason, or something like that. She knows he’s Monty’s friend, and he’s in the Chemistry Club with Raven, but Clarke doesn’t actually know him personally. She’s pretty sure he and Raven made some sort of drug once, just to see if they could. Crystal meth, she thinks.

She lost track of Raven a few rooms ago, when she’d dragged Wells off to look at something in Wick’s garage. He might grow weed in there.

Clarke’s having trouble paying attention to whatever Jason—or is it Jeremy? Jonathan?—is talking about. She’d promised her mom she’d call her, and it’s already been a few hours. She doesn’t want her to just wait by the phone all night, but she doesn’t know the house’s layout, or even if the guy—Wick, she’s pretty sure. Raven used to date him, or maybe just sleep with him—has a landline. Plenty of people don’t, these days, and Clarke was so nervous about the date that she forgot her cell at home.

“Do you know where the phone is?” she asks, interrupting the boy mid-word. He pauses to stare at her blankly, eyes glassy and goggles drooping crookedly on his head.

“What, like—a payphone? Do those still exist? I dunno man—”

Clarke squints at him. “How drunk are you? Did Bellamy already take your keys?”

The boy looks affronted. “How drunk am—how drunk are _you_? Did Bellamy already take _your_ keys?”

“I came with him,” she says, and he reaches down to where her hand hangs down by her side. He bumps his fist against her fingers.

“Nice,” he says, clearly happy for her, which is nice at least. “Pretty drunk,” he admits. “I don’t know where the phone is, but Harper probably does.”

“Harper?” Clarke’s pretty confident that Harper is one of Bellamy’s friends, from the record store.

The boy nods, pointing at nothing in particular. Then he seems to reconsider, and cups his hands around his mouth. “HEY! HAS ANYONE SEEN HARPER?”

There’s a chorus of yells, all different words at different volumes so Clarke can’t understand a single one, but then a girl she sort of recognizes shoulders her way through the crowd. She’s god a guitar case strapped to her back, and her straw-blonde hair is haphazardly braided and tied back with a bandana.

“What do you want, Jasper?”

“Clarke Griffin needs to use the phone,” he says, like it’s obvious, and Clarke tries not to wince. That’s how everyone’s been referring to her all night—Clarke Griffin. Never just _Clarke_. They use her whole name, like a celebrity, or a fictional character. Not like someone they _know_.

She’s trying not to let it bother her; after all, it’s her own fault if they feel like they don’t know her. She’s certainly never gone out of her way to try to know them. She’s _wanted_ to, but. She’d always assumed those sorts of things would happen on their own. And when they didn’t, she’d thought maybe they weren’t supposed to.

It wasn’t until recently that she’d decided she needed to make them happen on her own. It’s going pretty well, so far; people keep stopping her, to say how much they liked her speech, or to ask her to sign their yearbooks, or to compliment her hair. All in all, she’s mostly just disappointed she didn’t get to know these people sooner.

Harper just eyes her up and down, like she’s studying her for weak spots, and then shrugs a single shoulder. She’s wearing the strappy kind of tank top Clarke never thinks she can pull off, and a pair of bleached jeans covered in dozens of signatures, in green and red and black marker. There are some little drawings too, of arrowed hearts or peace signs or alien heads, and some _have a g8 summer!!_ ’s, but mostly just names.

“Come on, princess,” she says, and leads Clarke back into the house, from the hardwood deck outside.

They get stopped a few more times on their way down the hallway, before finally ducking into what might be a den, with a few bits of cushioned lived-in furniture and some wooden shelves stacked with true crime books and plastic CD cases. There’s a phone on a small table made of bits of metal welded together. The phone is one of the old kinds, with a receiver and a base, and a spiraled cord that connects the two. Her mom picks up on the first ring.

“Clarke?”

Clarke winces at the mild panic laced through her mom’s voice. They both still jump when the phone rings at night, and they both always pick up instantly. “Yeah, it’s me,” she says, and hears her mom sigh. “I won’t be home until later, but I promised I’d call.”

“I’m glad you did. Are you drinking?”

Clarke doesn’t even hesitate; she and her mom don’t keep secrets. “A little. Mostly the mixed stuff. You know I hate liquor.”

“Be safe,” her mom says. “Stay hydrated, and don’t drink anything from an open container. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“Is that boy—Bellamy—is he being good to you?”

Clarke grins, ducking her head into the hallway and sure enough, there he is, signing a girl’s yearbook at the end of the hall. “Yeah,” she says. “He’s really sweet. I think I like him.” That might be the understatement of the century; Clarke’s had a crush on Bellamy Blake since the sixth grade.

“Just be careful,” her mom warns, ever the pessimist, and Clarke fights the urge to roll her eyes. Her mom has her best interests at heart, she know, but—she’s always only ever seen the dark side of things. Her dad used to see the bright parts, the goodness, but now he’s gone and there’s just her mom and her cynicism. “You know you only have a month before you leave for Yale.”

“Yeah,” Clarke says, a little more shortly than she means to. She hates being reminded of Yale, of the application she sent out without telling her mom. She and her mom don’t keep secrets—except this one, and it’s been eating away at her for weeks, each time she checks the mailbox. “I know. I’ll see you when I get home.”

She hangs up, and turns to where Harper is very clearly eavesdropping, propped up against the wall and pretending to inspect her flaking purple nail polish. “It’s cool that you call your mom,” Harper says, and Clarke bristles a little, ready for the teasing, but it doesn’t come. She even seems like she means it.

“Thanks.”

Harper nods, like she’s decided something, and then pulls a lime green dry erase marker from her back pocket. “Sign my pants?”

Clarke grins, uncapping the marker, and bends over to reach a blank spot, just under Harper’s left him. “I would be honored.”

She straightens up and hands the marker back, but once Harper’s taken it, she grabs Clarke’s hand. “Come on,” she tugs her out into the hallway. Bellamy’s gone again, but the hall is far from empty, and they have to squeeze their way through, to the screened-in back porch. There’s an enormous pale pink couch which Harper drags her over to, and when they sit down, the cushions seem to swallow them whole.

Harper starts to unpack her guitar, and then pulls a flask from the case. She passes it to Clarke, who takes a sniff before tasting it—the alcohol is fruity, and it half-burns on the way down, but she drinks it anyway. She drinks more than she probably would have, if she hadn’t called her mom, but. It’s fine. She’ll get some Gatorade later.

“So, real talk,” Harper says, and Clarke chokes on her last gulp. “Why are you dating Bell now?”

Clarke coughs a little before shrugging, and makes to pass the flask back, but Harper just shakes her head, and pulls out another. “Because that’s when he asked me.”

“But _why_ are you dating Bell?”

Clarke shrugs again, staring at her hands. She’d painted her nails the day before, for graduation—actually, she’d had Wells paint them, because he’s better at it. A pearly color, because it goes with everything. Because it’s _practical_. Harper’s nails are electric purple, and Clarke’s a little bit jealous.

“Because I like him. A lot.”

Harper grins and clacks their flasks together, before strumming a couple chords. “I wrote this song about my ex-girlfriend,” she says, making a face, and then starts to sing.

Well, mostly she just recites poetry, with the backdrop of acoustic guitar. It’s an angry song, filled with hurt and regret, and Clarke kind of likes it. She likes that it’s so unapologetically bitter, and when Harper launches into the second chorus, she starts to sing— _recite_ —along. By the third song, they’ve made up a drinking game; take a shot every time the words _fuck, you,_ or _hate_ come up. But since they don’t have shot glasses, they have to sort of guess at the measurements. Which means they both get very drunk, very quickly. They’ve also taken to outright shouting the words, instead of just pseudo singing them, which means the room starts to get crowded as other people join in. As it turns out, drunk teenagers _like_ shouting things, especially angry things, and they don’t really need much of an invitation.

“I’m not a princess,” Clarke says—slurs, really. She definitely needs that Gatorade. She’s pretty sure she saw one of those football guys with a lemon-lime; she should ask where he got it.

“WHAT?” Harper asks, still in angry-shouting mode. Clarke lets her head droop onto Fox’s shoulder, beside her, and Fox starts to play with her hair.

“I know you all think I’m a princess,” Clarke says, frowning, and Fox moves on to pet her face, probably for sympathy.

“Yeah, but not like—a _bad_ princess. You’re the good kind,” Fox assures her. “Like Tiana. Or Lilo.”

“Lilo wasn’t a princess,” Harper says, voice hoarse.

“All girls are princesses,” Fox argues, and Clarke has to agree.

“That means you guys are princesses too,” Clarke decides, and turns to smack a wet kiss to Fox’s cheek, before leaning over to give Harper one too. Monroe’s draped on the floor, between their knees, and Clarke has to bend down to reach them. “Are you a princess or a prince today?”

Monroe’s wearing a pink pinstriped bowtie that matches the bow in their hair. They consider the question. “Prince, but with a princess’s style.”

“That counts too,” Clarke declares, and leaves sticky lip prints on Monroe’s skin.

This is how Raven finds her, hands on her hips, looking smug. “Wow, Griffin,” she smirks. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”

Clarke sighs. “That’s what I mean,” she says, exasperated. “I’m a princess but I’m not, like, stuck up!”

Raven frowns. “Who called you stuck up?”

“I know that’s how everyone sees me.”

“That’s how we _used_ to see you,” Harper says, patting Clarke’s hand as Raven reaches over to tug her upright. She’s still a little wobbly, and she almost trips over Monroe a few times, but eventually Harper and Raven have her mostly standing.

“Bellamy didn’t,” Clarke grins, and she doesn’t even bother hiding it; she’s too drunk to be sneaky and anyway, it’s not like they don’t already _know_. She’s been completely obvious about him. “When we were kids.”

“He still doesn’t,” Raven says, which is why she’s Clarke’s favorite. Raven never bothers with subtlety. “He’s such a nerd.”

“I like that about him,” Clarke sighs. “His nerdiness. And his hair. And his everything.”

“You should probably tell him that,” Harper shifts a little, and Clarke suddenly realizes they’ve already reached the front door, and Harper’s trying to turn the knob without dropping her.

“How are you not more drunk than me?” Clarke demands, squinting at her suspiciously. She _knows_ Harper drank more than her—once they finished their flasks, Harper found a six pack of Coors, and _then_ she wheedled some shots out of someone. They tasted like cough syrup.

Harper grins with all her teeth, like a shark. “Practice.”

“Oh, thank god.”

Clarke looks up to see Bellamy staring at them on the front porch, shoulders sagging in relief. He’s still wearing the dark leather jacket he’d picked her up in, and it must be just for show because it’s the beginning of June, and perfectly warm out. But it does make his arms look good, so she’s not about to complain.

“Missed me?” she teases, grinning stupidly because she’s _completely obvious_. Bellamy grins back, reaching up to card a hand through her hair, fingers getting a little caught in the braids Fox gave her.

“Yeah,” he says, earnest, and she’s even sure he means it.

“Okay, lovebirds,” Raven barks, rolling her eyes. “Get going, before Wick talks you into giving everyone else a ride home.”

Clarke finally looks up, only to find that the yard is mostly deserted. In fact, the house is quiet too, or at least quieter. The edges of the sky have gone all dusty pink and blue and purple, like the sun’s about to come up. There are a few teens still passed out in the bushes or on the grass, and one curled up around the mailbox post, sleeping it off.

“Where’s Wells?” she asks, starting to panic. She thinks about the last time he was at a party, and grimaces.

“Chill out, he’s in the backseat of my car,” Raven says, making a face. “He didn’t even make it past midnight. He’s such a grandma.”

Clarke squints over at her, suspicious. “You’re secretly a mother hen too,” she decides, and Bellamy cackles as Raven chokes.

“Thanks for this,” Bellamy says, putting the mostly-empty pillow case in Raven’s hand. She grumbles something along the lines of _yeah, whatever_ , and Bellamy pulls Clarke in against his side as they head towards his car. Clarke doesn’t really know much about cars, but it’s clearly very old, and Bellamy is clearly very proud of it.

He’s careful to lean her against the side of the car while he opens the passenger door for her, and Clarke smiles as he helps her in. She reaches a hand up to play with his hair when he leans over to fiddle with her seatbelt.

“I love your hair,” she says, feeling buzzed and warm and happy. She leans in to press her nose against the heated skin of his neck. “I missed you too.” Harper was probably right; she should tell him. If he doesn’t already know since, again—she’s _completely obvious_.

But he must not know, because he pulls back, looking surprised, and _fond_. “On a scale of one to ten, how pissed will your mom be if I take you home plastered?”

Clarke grins, as he digs something out of the back before swinging around the hood of the car, to his own seat “I’m not _plastered_.”

“Oh really? Then I guess you don’t need this.” He hands out a bottle of purple Gatorade, which is actually Clarke’s favorite, and she gasps dramatically and grabs it from his hands.

“I could maybe me more sober,” she admits, and takes a sip.

Bellamy grins and digs out his own bottle—electric blue, like a swimming pool—and for a moment they sit in silence, sipping their drinks and watching the sky fade a little more each minute.

“I totally thought you’d still hate me,” Bellamy says, and Clarke turns to look at him so quickly her neck burns. He’s staring down at the bit of blue still left in his bottle.

“No,” she says, soft. “I sort of did, for a while. After that night. I just—I didn’t understand why you _left_.” She licks her laps, which have grown chapped from the alcohol, and her mouth’s probably stained purple from the Gatorade. “I thought you’d forgotten me by now.”

He looks up to offer a grin, but it’s wry and humorless. “You’re hard to forget about.”

“You’re hard to hate.”

“We probably shouldn’t even try, then,” he decides, pragmatic, and turns on the engine. Clarke leans her head against the seat as he pulls out. The sun finally starts to rise, turning everything yellow, lighting the world up from the back, like a million silhouettes.

“Probably,” she agrees with a smile.

He parks at the end of her street, so he can walk her the rest of the way, slowly so they have more time. He drapes his jacket over her too, even though she’s not cold, but Clarke just grins and tucks into it. It smells like his body wash—or what she assumes is his body wash. The spicy cinnamon kind sold at the drug store.

“My mom thinks I shouldn’t get too attached to you, since we don’t have much time left,” she muses, as Bellamy kicks some broken glass off the sidewalk so she won’t have to walk through it. She bites back a smile—it would have been easier just to walk around, but of course he’d try to kill it for her.

He’s clearly not looking over on purpose. “She’s probably right,” he agrees, and she _knows_ that if she said they should just be friends, then he would listen, and he wouldn’t pressure her or try to change her mind.

“But I told her I’m already attached,” she chirps, and _now_ he looks over, like he’s still somehow surprised. Like he somehow doesn’t know, no matter how obvious she’s been.

“We really don’t have a lot of time,” he says, like he’s reminding himself.

“Fuck time,” Clarke says, and he snorts. It’s possible she’s still a little tipsy.

“I don’t think that’s how it works.”

“I don’t care.” She stops; they’re at the end of her drive, now, with the headstones glinting at them across the street, and her ridiculous house looming over them to the left.

This whole night, Clarke’s been assuming it’s the same for him, that he’d called because he _liked_ her, but what if he doesn’t? What if he just wanted to make up for the shitty stuff he did in ninth grade, and she was just a checkbox on his karmic to-do list?

“I don’t—” she huffs a little, trying to come up with the right words. She’s always been good with words; used to read the dictionary for fun and highlight the ones she looked up, so she could make sure to use them later, used to always request Scrabble on game nights with the Jaha’s, or Balderdash when she could. She and her dad used to do the Sunday crossword together, over breakfast.

But she’s never been good with _people_ , not really. And even though Bellamy was always different, always easier than everyone else, she’s still having to struggle, and she _hates_ that she’s not good at this, at letting people know she cares.

“I’m not saying we have to, but—I want to date you, but only if you want it too, and if you don’t that’s fine—”

“Fuck,” Bellamy says, and her mouth snaps shut with an audible _pop_. He reaches out, falters, and then runs a hand around the side of her neck, just light enough to make her shiver as he steps closer. “Fuck—of _course_ I want to—oh my god, I’m so fucking into you it’s,” he shakes his head, which makes her laugh a little, breathless and giddy because Bellamy’s _always_ been smooth. She knew him back when he was short and awkward from puberty, but she’s seen him around high school since then, seen the writing in the girls’ bathroom stalls, heard the stories. And he’s _always_ smooth with them, but now he’s stuttering and tripping over himself, and it makes her stomach clench because _he wants her_. Maybe as much as she wants him.

“I was going to just kiss you,” he says, leaning down to brush his nose against her cheek, and she presses her grin into his jaw, barely-there stubble rough against her mouth. “Like in the movies, but I remember how much you hate that.”

“I hated it when I was twelve because I thought I had to hate all “girly” things. Like chick flicks and the color pink.” She pressed a quick kiss to the dimple in his chin and he laughed, tugging her closer. “But I actually really like chick flicks and the color pink, and grand romantic gestures.”

“Noted,” he says, sliding his hand up to her cheek. “So, boom box outside your window’s acceptable?”

She laughs into his wrist. “Maybe not _that_ grand—”

He cuts her off with a kiss, and she wants to laugh at that too, but then his tongue is moving against hers, slow and warm and she nearly dissolves then and there. Clarke’s kissed a few people before—one boy in a game of Spin the Bottle, her ninth grade boyfriend Finn (who turned out to be Raven’s boyfriend too), her Junior Prom date Lexa—but none of them have made her feel like _this_. Like she’s ready to dissolve, or burn up from the inside out. None of them have been _Bellamy_.

And she’s pretty sure it’s the same for him, because when she pulls away to breathe, he just dips his head down to the crook between her neck and shoulder, and groans.

“I really missed you,” he says, voice muffled by his jacket, still wrapped around her. She hums and runs a hand through his hair, just because she can.

“Me too,” she says, because it’s true. Even when she sort of hated him, she missed him. He’d been one of her best friends, one of her _only_ friends, and he’d left her behind. And she couldn’t even _really_ hate him, because his mom had just died, and he was angry and bitter and awful, and she knew it was because he was hurt. But she still wanted to hit him. Just a little. She still wanted to write dumb comics with him in the library.

But—better late than never. “What are you doing tomorrow?”

Bellamy straightens up with a grin, the crooked kind that makes all the girls melt at school. Clarke pointedly stays standing, even if it does take some effort. “Today is tomorrow.”

“Okay,” she rolls her eyes. “What are you doing later today?”

“Hopefully you,” he says, and then immediately flushes. It’s honestly a good look on him. “I mean—hanging out with you.”

“We could do both,” she muses, and grins when he chokes. He’s still trying to catch his breath when she leans up to peck him on the cheek. “I’ll see you later, Bellamy.”

He waits, to make sure she gets in safely, just like she knew he would. She still has his jacket. He might never get it back.

Her mom’s waiting in the kitchen when Clarke walks in, and there are fresh cinnamon buns on the counter because Abby orders food when she’s nervous. She never actually _eats_ it, but Clarke thinks the smell of baked goods calms her down. Jake used to bake a lot—pies and pavlovas and cupcakes and raspberry swiss rolls. He always used too much butter and not enough salt, and cinnamon even if the recipe didn’t call for it.

He used to say a real home smelled like fresh bread, and Clarke’s inclined to agree. Her home has certainly never smelled quite right after he died—Abby can’t do anything involving an oven, and the bakery downtown doesn’t use the Jake Griffin butter-to-salt ratio, so it’s not the same.

“How was your night?” her mom asks. She’s holding a mug of steaming black coffee, and Clarke roots through the cupboard to get her own. She’ll need to sleep at some point, but she likes drinking coffee with her mom; her dad always hated it, so it’s something she and Abby have always had together.

“Good,” she says, grinning into her drink once she’s poured it, and added the specialty creamer her mom buys just for her. “Really good, actually. I met so many great people from school that I didn’t even know.”

Abby smiles, visibly relieved. She’s gotten thinner since Jake’s death, and it makes Clarke nervous, because—what happens when she leaves, too? Her mom will be all alone in this enormous, empty house, with nothing but dead and dying people to keep her company.

“That’s great, honey.” Clarke watches her mom’s throat work, like she’s having trouble with her next words. “And the bo—Bellamy?”

“He was good too. We’re dating now.”

Abby raises a brow, just like Clarke knew she would. “Is that wise? You’re leaving soon, Clarke.”

The guilt twists at itself in Clarke’s stomach. She _needs_ to tell her, needs to show her the brochures and the website and argue all the bullet points she’s typed up and printed out at the school library. But the timing hasn’t been right, and she’s still waiting to know if she’s even been accepted, so there’s no point in bringing it up _now_.

“I know, and so does he, but we both agreed to just give it a go and make the most of what time we do have left.” She says it concisely, the only way her mom will accept, she knows. Abby clearly doesn’t like it, but she’s always respected Clarke’s judgement, and she nods, if a little curtly.

“Alright,” she fiddles with her wedding ring, which she only does when she’s missing Jake’s input. Clarke thumbs at the watch at her wrist. She misses it too; he’d probably crack some joke about cleaning a shotgun when Bellamy comes to pick her up—even though Jake never even _owned_ a shotgun. He’d sit down with a cup of warm apple cider, and break out that week’s crossword puzzle and a pen. He always carried a pen, because he said you never knew when you might need a weapon.

“So,” Abby says. “Tell me about these new friends of yours.”

“Okay,” Clarke grins, and grabs one of the sticky buns and a plate before settling in.

 

“Blake!”

Bellamy glances up to find Indra glaring over at him, which isn’t actually that intimidating, since it seems to be her natural expression. He’s in the ring with one of the younger kids, Sterling, trying to perfect his left hook.

“You got a visitor.” She angles her head over towards the front entrance, and Bellamy grins when he sees Clarke chatting with Kai, where he’s working on a Transformers coloring book, with nothing but varying shades of pink crayons.

They’ve been dating for just two weeks and Bellamy already knows he’s going to fall apart when she leaves. He’s trying not to freak out about it. Mostly he’s just been spending as much time as he can with her—dragging her to the record store, or hanging out with her and Wells, when he’s not working at the gym, or part-time at the library.

He half-jogs over to her, and smirks when the first thing she does is tug him off to the side to make out.

“At first I thought you had a kickboxing kink, but you do this when you see me at the library too,” he teases, biting her jaw, and she sighs into his neck. She keeps running her hands through his hair, even though it’s all clumped together and sweaty.

“You’re really hot everywhere,” she shrugs, like it’s obvious, and he presses her up against the wall to kiss her all over again.

“So,” he says, pulling back. “Not that I’m not glad to see you, I’m always glad to see you, but I think they’re going to start docking my pay every time you come in. Did you need something?”

“That depends,” she worries her lip a little, his favorite of her habits, and he reaches up to tug it out, with his thumb. “When do you get off?”

He grabs her wrist and tilts it so he can read her watch. “Half an hour. Why?”

“Meet me out front?” She’s purposefully avoiding his questions, but he lets it go. She’ll probably tell him later.

There’s the little voice in his head that says this is it, she’s about to break up with him, but he promptly tells that voice to go fuck itself.

He’s still pretty worthless for the next half hour though; halfway through, when he manages to drop all the chest pads _again_ , O barks at him to just leave early. He doesn’t bother showering, just rips off his gloves and tugs his duffel bag over one shoulder, before heading out to Clarke’s car.

It’s a nice one, and new, a bullet-silver 2012 BMW that he’d had to teach her to drive because highways make her nervous. They’d been a mess at first, and she kept forgetting to switch off her blinkers, but eventually she got the hang of it.

Bellamy tosses an old towel down on her front seat before climbing in, because he’s still gross, and Clarke grins, leaning over to kiss him. She can’t seem to stop kissing him and he’s glad, because he can’t really either. He knows this is the honeymoon phase, that eventually they’ll start getting sick of being all over each other. He’s not really looking forward to it.

“So?” he asks, waiting, and Clarke only hesitates a minute before reaching over to pop the glove box open.

She pulls out a letter and drops it in his lap. He has to squint to read the writing, without his glasses, but he can make out _ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO_ , and the word _accepted_ , and turns to her with a grin.

“Holy shit princess, I didn’t know you were going to art school.”

She’s still worrying her lip, like this somehow isn’t the best news ever, and the sight of it makes him frown. “Yeah,” she says, but her voice sounds off.

“What am I missing?”

She takes a deep breath and lets it all out with the words. “My mom thinks I’m going to Yale in five weeks.”

“Ah,” he says, glancing back at the paper in his hands. It definitely says _Chicago_ , and he’s pretty sure Yale is not in Illinois. “When are you going to tell her?”

“Maybe never,” she admits. “I didn’t even think I’d get in, honestly. And I don’t even know what I’d _do_ in Chicago.”

“Aren’t they known for their hot dogs or something?” Bellamy asks, and Clarke shoots him a Look. “It’s an Art Institute. I’m assuming you’d study art.”

“But I don’t even know what kind of art I’m good at,” she says, and her voice is getting higher and louder, bordering on panic, so Bellamy reaches over to rub at the back of her neck.

“That’s why you go to school, though, to learn. Clarke, you’re the best artist I know.”

“I’m the only artist you know,” she says, but at least she sounds calmer. “I just—my parents _met_ at Yale, and they always wanted me to go there, mom especially, and Chicago’s even farther than New Haven, and—”

“Okay, breathe.” Bellamy shifts so he can lean over the console and hold her face in both hands. “No matter what you decide, your mom will love and support you, okay? And so will I.”

Clarke’s eyes go wide and it takes him a moment to realize what he’s just said. “I mean—”

“I love you,” she blurts, reaching up to clench both of his wrists so hard it hurts a little, but he doesn’t even care. “I love you, so much, and I know it’s probably too soon but—”

“Fuck too soon,” he says, and she grins. “Fuck too soon, and fuck Yale. Hell, fuck all of Rhode Island.”

Her grin softens, and she moves her face a little, so she can kiss his hand where it sits on her cheek. “Yale’s in Connecticut.”

“Fuck them too.”

“You say fuck too much,” she laughs, and he kisses her.

“Fuck is a great word,” he says, low, into her mouth. “It’s a noun, an adjective, a verb,” he grins when she flushes. “It’s a placeholder for when no other words can do a moment justice.”

She noses at his neck, licks the sweat off his skin so he shudders. “You still haven’t said it.”

“I love you,” he says, sounding so desperate she laughs, but he ignores it. “Of course I fucking love you, you’re— _jesus christ_ , _Clarke_ —I love you, okay?”

She’s still grinning when he leans in. “Okay,” she nods, making it difficult to kiss her. “Okay.”

“Can we take your car?” she asks, and he’s a little smug about how wrecked she sounds. When he pulls back, he sees her French braid’s a complete disaster from his hands.

“Why?”

The grin she shoots is deadly. “Bigger backseat.”

Bellamy’s mouth opens and closes a few times before he remembers how words work, and Clarke seems proud of herself. “I gave O a ride. But if you drive to the apartment, I can grab her truck.”

Clarke turns the key so quick he has to laugh, watching as she barely speeds her way down the streets. “Desperate,” he teases, but his mouth goes dry when she just says ” _Yes_.”

Octavia’s truck is even older than Bellamy’s MR-2, more rusted and dented and with way less of the work he’s put in, but it still runs and that’s what counts. It’s been there for as long as he can remember, a bent-up orange blur in the parking lot of his life. It’s a stick shift, which means Clarke doesn’t know how to drive it, but she immediately hops into the driver’s seat, anyway.

“Teach me,” she demands, and he shrugs, and shows her how to shift into reverse, so they can pull out of the parking lot.

It’s harder than it was with the BMW, which at least was an automatic and had a transmission they could trust. O’s truck is a loud roaring, coughing thing, and Clarke’s never driven anything with a clutch before, and she keeps stripping the gears until Bellamy’s teeth grind at the sound, and she can’t manage to shift out of second without stalling.

They make it roughly two miles, up to the old abandoned look-out hill. It’s supposedly a tourist destination, but the view’s blocked by a bunch of skinny un-photogenic trees, and the grass is going bald in patches. There’s an old rickety bench off to one side, with a metal plate on the back that says it’s dedicated to the Civil War battle that took place there, except Bellamy’s poured through as many Civil War books as he could find, and read nothing about the Battle of Arkton Hill, so he’s pretty sure it’s made up.

Clarke manages to shift the truck into park, and Bellamy pulls up the parking brake just in case.

“I want to see the view,” she decides, and slips out, slamming the door shut behind her before marching up to the edge of the hill and looking down. Bellamy follows her out, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his gym shorts. He still smells like sweat, and his skin is itching with the dried layers, but she doesn’t seem to care.

“You know people come up here to hook up,” she says, mild, like she’s talking about the weather. Bellamy glances at her but she’s steadfastly staring out at the trees.

“Yeah,” he nods. “I know.”

“Cool,” she says, and then tugs him back to the truck. He’s pretty sure they’re about to hardcore make out on the bench seat, and then he’ll drive her back to her car, or they’ll have dinner at the Dominoes, or something, but instead she marches up to the bed and lowers the gate. The old hinges squeal as it drops, and then she hitches herself up.

Bellamy sits down beside her, and Clarke swings herself into his lap. “Still desperate?” he jokes, mostly to cover up the strain in his voice. He’s not sure it works.

Clarke grinds down on his crotch smoothly, like she’s done it a hundred times, and he groans. “I’m always desperate around you,” she admits, and that’s all it takes for him to surge up, just as needy.

“Me too,” he says, voice hoarse against her neck, and she whines when he bites down there.

She pulls back to yank off her shirt, and tosses it somewhere in the grass. She’s wearing a bra, some soft purple color, with lace around the edge, and the sight of it nearly kills him.

“Fuck, Clarke,” he swears, and she laughs when he smacks wet kisses against the tops of her breasts, reaching up to yank the cups down. He barely catches himself, and freezes.

“What,” she pants, fumbling at the elastic waistband of his shorts. “What’s wrong?”

“If someone drives around this corner, they’ll see us,” Bellamy says, and she pulls back so he can see her roll her eyes, before rolling them over. He bangs his elbow on the metal and winces, but then she’s pulling him on top of her, laying down so they’re hidden by the sides of the truck bed.

“Better?” She dips her hand inside his shorts to stroke him, a little rough and inexperienced, but it makes him jerk anyway, and she grins.

“Are you—we don’t have to—are you sure?” He has to choke the words out with each tug she gives, but then she softens, leaning up to kiss him, sweet and impossibly chaste, for the fact that she has his dick in her hand.

“Bellamy,” she sighs, settling back down underneath him. “I’ve wanted to marry you since I was eleven.”

He _knows_ his grin is stupidly happy, but he can’t really help it. He is stupidly happy. “Me too,” he agrees, and tugs her bra down so he can get his mouth around a nipple.

She’s writhing up against him and making so many little high pitched noises that he’s sure he can get her off just like this, her bra down around her ribcage and her jean shorts still on, but eventually Clarke pushes him off, herself, and shimmies out of her shorts and underwear.

“Condom?” she asks, looking flushed and messy and perfect, and Bellamy shakes his head. There’s a box of Trojans in the glove box, he knows, and Octavia would definitely not notice if he took one, but he has other plans.

“I want to try something, first,” he says, and Clarke looks ready to argue, but he’s already ducking his head between her thighs, licking a hot stripe up against her as she bucks against his mouth. He has to throw an arm over her stomach, to anchor her down as he works her across the edge, only pulling away when she starts to sob and he’s worried he’s broken her.

But when he sits up, she pulls him back over her, kissing and kissing him until he can’t breathe.

“So,” he says, when she’s finished; she’s panting and bright pink and dazed and he’s only a little smug. “Good?”

“Oh my god,” she says, and he laughs, pressing a kiss to her sweaty shoulder. “Where did you learn how to do that?”

“I read a bunch of O’s Cosmo Girl’s.”

Clarke immediately starts laughing at him, and he frowns, affronted.

“She keeps them in the bathroom; there’s nothing else to do!”

“No,” she leans up to kiss him, placating, tugging him back. “It’s good, it’s good, you’re so good.”

Bellamy grins, biting her chin until she laughs again. “That’s right. Hang on,” he slips over the side and ducks into the cab, grabbing a condom packet from the glove box, before hopping back.

“Prepared,” Clarke notes, amused, and he swipes a kiss to her cheek as he tears the packet open.

“I was a boy scout.”

“Oh, you were not,” she snorts, and then grabs his hand when he goes to put it on. She’s worrying her lip again, and it’s already swollen from his mouth. “Can I—?”

She looks a little uncertain about it, and Bellamy freezes. “You’ve never had sex.” He’s not really sure why he’s so surprised; he _knows_ she’s not very social, or wasn’t, but—she’s dated people, so he’d just assumed.

“Please don’t be an idiot about this,” she says, exasperated. “ _No_ , I haven’t had sex before. But I want to have sex _now_ , in this truck, with you, so can we get on with it?”

“We’re in the back of my sister’s truck,” Bellamy says, because he is absolutely about to be an idiot about this. He can’t just hook up with the girl he’s in love with, who apparently wants to lose her virginity to him; he’s too existential. “At some ugly _field_ , in the _open_ —”

Clarke reaches down to grab the condom, and slides it on, swallowing his gasp with her mouth. “I want you,” she says, pulling him against her, until he can feel how wet she is, how hot. “I’ve wanted you for so long, Bellamy Blake and I swear to god, if you make me wait any longer, I’ll—”

He kisses her, and slides in. “Okay,” he says, going slow so he won’t hurt her. He hasn’t actually been with a virgin, but he’s read that it usually hurts for girls the first time, and he really doesn’t want that for her. “Just tell me what you want.”

“You,” she says, a little breathless, and moves up to meet him.

“I love you too but that’s not really what I meant,” he grins, and she smacks his shoulder, keening a little when he shifts up.

“ _There_ ,” she breathes, and he listens, kissing her when she starts getting too loud, moving down when she tilts her head back, keeping the rhythm she seems to like best.

She starts whispering his name, nails biting into the skin of his shoulders, and so he speeds up, until she cuts herself off with a whine. She comes first, which he considers an accomplishment, and quietly, making shaky little noises into his neck.

When he’s finished and she’s too sensitive, she shoves him off and rolls over, wet skin sticking to his side. He leans down to nose at her throat, combing her hair back. “Are you cold?”

“No, and if you move to grab a blanket, I might kill you.”

When he pulls back to look at her, he sees her eyes are closed, chest still heaving as she tries to catch his breath. He grins and ducks down to smack a kiss to one breast and then the other, and then does it all over again when she starts wriggling and trying not to laugh.

“I love your chest,” he says, because _boobs_ sounds too eighth grade, and Clarke smirks up at him.

“I couldn’t tell,” she teases, and then goes quiet, biting at her lip as she reaches up to brush the hair from his eyes. “I love your hair.”

“My _hair_?”

She rolls her eyes. “ _And_ your abs. And your arms. And thighs.” She makes a face when he grins, but he can’t really help it. Bellamy knows he’s good looking; he’s worked hard at it, he flaunts what he’s got. But it’s different, actually _hearing_ it, and it’s different when it’s coming from Clarke.

“No,” he says, falling back beside her, playing with the mess he’s made of her braid. The hair tie is gone, he’s pretty sure for forever. “Please, go on.”

“Alright,” she says, taking the challenge. She runs a hand from his temple, down the side of his face, poking at the dip in his chin, the place she likes to kiss when she gets drunk and more affectionate than usual. “I love your eyes, you have puppy dog eyes,” she says, and he frowns.

“ _Puppy dog_ —”

“Shh,” she jabs him in the chest. “I’m not done. I love your freckles, I love how every time I look, there are more. I love how you know all these random history facts, and your shitty sense of humor.” She swings a leg over his lap and crawls onto his stomach, leaning her head on both hands to grin down at him. “I love how good you are with kids, I love how much you care about your car, and your friends, and your family. I love your mouth,” she gives an exaggerated wink, and he laughs but it comes out strange, because his chest is still in knots.

He’s honestly not sure what he’ll do when this girl finally leaves him—and she will leave him. Even on his best days, Bellamy knows he’s not really much. He might actually break. He’s never had somebody look at him the way she does, and he’s not sure he can go back to not having that.

She pokes him on the nose. “Your turn.”

“Okay.” He rolls them over on their sides again, and keeps a hand warm on her hip. Her skin is going cool in the evening air, but she hasn’t even shivered. “I love your hair, even when it looks like a bird’s nest.” She makes a face, and he grins. “I love your tiny hands and feet, I love the noises that you make during sex, I love this little mole above your lip—” he kisses it, quick and chaste, and she chases his mouth for a minute.

“I love your lip gloss or chapstick or whatever it is—you always taste like peaches. I love how hard you work and how you always text your mom when you stay out late.” He brushes the splotches of purple paint on the slope of her neck, faded from her shower but still there. “I love these. You’re always covered in color.” He looks up to find her beaming. “I love your eyes,” he says, serious. “They’re princess eyes.”

She’s biting her lip again, and he pulls it out. She kisses the pad of his thumb. “Princess eyes?”

“Like the ocean.”

She leans in until her breath lands on his mouth, and she smells like peaches too. “But my boobs are still your favorite, right?”

Bellamy barks out a laugh and tugs her in. They’re still sticky and gross and starting to goosebump and he knows they’ll get cold soon and they’ll have to leave, but. They have a few minutes to lay here. “Yeah, babe,” he presses a kiss to her hair and she sighs. “They’re definitely my number one.”

 

“Okay, but what are you going to do now?” Harper asks, and Bellamy falters a little. They’re eating lunch at the record shop, except Harper doesn’t technically get a lunch break so really they’re just hunched down behind the front counter, eating Pad Thai out of the cartons and hoping no one comes in.

“What?”

“Like, what’s your romance plan?” Monroe clarifies, which doesn’t actually help at all.

Bellamy swallows his last bite. “What are you talking about? It’s already happened; she’s been romanced. We’re in love, we’re dating, we’re having great sex. What more is there to plan?”

Harper and Monroe share a dubious look that has him nervous. When Harper next speaks, it’s around a spring roll. “First of all, you guys have had sex _once_ —”

“Three times,” he corrects, automatic, and she makes a face.

“Whatever, look. Clarke’s had a not so great history with love, right? And you’ve never had a girlfriend, so you’re used to sex being _just sex_ , but it’s not for her, okay? And you need to show her that it’s different for you too.”

“Of course it’s different,” Bellamy says, a little defensive. “She knows it’s different.”

“But does she _know_?” Monroe presses, and there’s a stretched moment where he just stares between them both, incredulous.

“I don’t—what is it you want me to do?”

“It’s not about what _we_ want,” Harper says, clearly exasperated with him and all of his life choices. “It’s about what Clarke wants. You know her better than we do.”

Bellamy nods and slurps up the last of his lo mein, before leaning up to check that the coast is clear. His shift at the library starts in ten minutes. “Okay,” he decides. “I’ll think about it.”

“That’s not good enough!” Harper declares as he leaves. “Actions, Blake! Actions!”

Bellamy doesn’t actually have the credentials to work as a real librarian, so mostly his job just includes shelving books and making sure the punch cards are all in their sleeves, even though everything’s digital anyway.

He’s shelving the FIC-AUS’s, specifically an old eighties copy of _Pride and Prejudice_ when he gets the idea.

The hardest part of the whole thing is finding a book of stamps.

“Hey O, do you have any stamps?”

Octavia immediately freezes, where she’s standing with her head in the freezer, still flushed from her latest workout with the heavyweight bag strung up on the balcony. She turns to fix him with a heavy stare.

Bellamy knows this look—it’s her _I’m going to make you tell me everything you know_ look, and it is not pleasant.

“Why do you need _stamps_?”

“I’m starting a collection,” he says, dry. The best way to combat Special Forces Interrogator Octavia is pure-grade sarcasm, so she can’t tell if he’s serious or not. Eventually she just gets bored and goes to make a hair mask out of hummus or something. “I’m mailing a letter, what the fuck do you think?”

“Defensive,” she says, like she’s noting it on a mental yellow legal pad. “What letter are you mailing? To who?”

“To whom,” he corrects, just to be an asshole, and she scowls.

“Don’t be a dick,” she snaps, and he grins.

“Kai’s in the next room, watch your language.”

“Fuck you. What letter?”

Bellamy sighs. “It’s a love letter to my girlfriend, alright? Can you just give me a fucking stamp or do I have to go spend fifteen dollars at the CVS?”

Octavia studies him for a moment, eyes narrowed, trying to tell if he’s still joking. “Honestly, you would be that much of a nerd,” she decides, and then pads over to the coat rack, to dig through the strappy jean purse that she never actually carries. She pulls out three little serrated squares of tamps, and passes them over. Her feet are still wrapped in Ace bandages from practice, and leave little bloody smudges wherever she walks across the wood floor. It’s not her blood, of course; it never is.

“Thanks,” he says, and he even means it.

“You owe me your first born child,” she shrugs, and he’s pretty sure she means it too.

He uses an old envelope he finds in the kitchen everything drawer, tossed in with the dried out uncapped markers and old batteries and bits of string used to pull out Kai’s teeth. He’s pretty sure O was supposed to mail some sort of electrical bill in it, but he figures if she forgot about it, it probably wasn’t that important anyway.

Bellamy doesn’t actually mail out the letter until after dinner, because he keeps either forgetting or getting cold feet, or debating whether or not to just give it to Clarke in person. Eventually, after Octavia leaves for her dinner-time shift, and after the dishes are done and Kai’s in his pajamas and tucked into bed, and O’s preoccupied with some sort of shaving cream made out of sugar, he ducks down the apartment complex stairs and throws the letter in the lobby mail slot, before he loses his nerve completely.

He’s barely back inside, when the phone rings. He gets to it first, and they don’t have caller ID, but there’s a limited number of people who call them, and telemarketers usually stick to the hours between nine and five.

For a minute, he thinks maybe she somehow knew about the letter, but decides that’s impossible. It’s just a coincidence.

“Hello?”

“What are you wearing?” Clarke asks, and he grins, ducking down the hall to his bedroom.

“Are you seriously calling me for a booty call?” he teases, but he locks his door just in case.

“No, Bell, this is not a booty call. It’s phone sex. Totally different.”

“Oh yeah, stupid me.” He flops down on his bed with a grin. “Sorry, please continue.”

Clarke huffs a little, and he can picture her so perfectly; tucked up under her covers, wearing the ratty tank top she likes to sleep in, and maybe a pair of underwear. Hair all braided up to one side, or tossed back in a bun. Face just washed, bedroom lights low. The soft orange lava lamp she has in one corner, a present from Raven that year.

“I already started—I asked what you’re wearing. Now it’s your turn.”

“Right,” he grins. “My bad. I’m in a pair of gym shorts and a sweatshirt. The one you yanked the drawstring out of, thanks for that by the way. Uh, and socks. You?”

“A tank top and underwear,” she says, and he laughs. “What?”

“Nothing, just, _god_. I really love you.”

“Because of my tank top or because of phone sex?”

“Both,” he decides. “Plus, you know. Just you, generally.”

“Good to know,” she says, but he can tell she’s smiling. “If I was there I’d go down on you.”

Bellamy chokes a little, shoving a hand down his shorts to stroke himself. “Fuck, yeah?”

“Yeah,” she says, but her breathing’s a little off, so he knows she’s getting herself off too. She’s getting off while thinking about _him_. “I’ve never given a blowjob before,” she adds. “I’d like to try it. On you.”

“How would you do it?”

Clarke hums a little, obviously putting some actual thought about it, and he starts timing his strokes to her breathing, until they match. “Like you did—I’d lick all the way up and then back down again. Then I think I’d probably just try to, I don’t know. Deep throat you, or something.”

Bellamy barely hears the front door open over the sound of his own embarrassing whine. He doesn’t really register that it means his sister is home, until he hears the dull click of the other receiver being picked up, but by then it’s too late.

“ _Bellamy_ ,” Clarke moans, and he swears. There’s another dull click, and the sound of something being thrown in the living room. But then Clarke’s _whimpering_ his name, so he can’t even care.

She’s so close, he can tell; she’s just whining and making all these perfect little noises, and sometimes his name. “God, your mouth is so perfect,” he says, and she whimpers a little, spurring him on. Bellamy’s had phone sex before, but it was mostly just a lot of role playing, a lot of _what would you do if_ this _happened?_ Not like this. “I love the way you taste, Clarke. I love the way you feel—I can never decide if I want my mouth or my hands on you first, or if I want to be inside you.”

“I love your hands,” she says, gasping, and he grins, coming in his shorts with a grunt.

“More or less than you love my hair?”

There’s a tiny high pitched keen and then silence. Then, “It’s a tie,” she decides, breathing heavy.

Bellamy rolls over and lets her catch her breath, trying to imagine her all sprawled out, hair a messy fan on her pillow. “So, any news on the art school front?”

There’s some rustling, like she’s rolling over too. “I’m going to tell her tomorrow.”

“What changed your mind?”

He can’t _see_ her rolling her eyes, but he knows she does, anyway. “You did, obviously. And I talked to Wells about it too. And Raven.”

“Raven?” He’s not really sure why he’s surprised; he knows she and Clarke are friends, but he didn’t think they were all that close. Not _talk about our futures_ close.

“I think she and Wells might be secretly dating.”

Bellamy frowns. He hasn’t actually seen much of Raven this summer, between his jobs and spending time with Clarke, and Raven’s gig at some high class computer company where she mostly answers phones, they just haven’t found the time. But he likes to think that if she started dating _Wells Jaha_ , she’d at least tell him about it.

“What makes you think that?”

“I don’t know—every time I call Wells, he’s just been talking to her, or she’s actually there with him. And I haven’t seen either of them with anyone else lately.”

“Yeah but that doesn’t mean they’re dating,” Bellamy argues. “Maybe they’re becoming friends, since you and I are always hanging out. Being in a secret relationship seems kind of overdramatic.”

Clarke hums. “Maybe. But anyway, they both agreed. I need to go to art school and spread my wings, or something. I’m not really sure. Raven turned it into a bird metaphor.”

“Raven turns everything into a bird metaphor,” Bellamy confirms. “When she was fifteen, she used to wear a shirt her ex made that said QUOTHE ME.”

“Finn,” Clarke agrees. “I know. He made me one that had a crown on it.”

Bellamy frowns. “Why’d he make you a shirt?”

“Because we were dating at the time.”

“When was this?” He’s pretty sure Raven was dating Finn up until he transferred to some prep school upstate, but maybe he got his timeline mixed up.

“Ninth grade. I didn’t know about Raven, she didn’t know about me. It was this whole big thing for like a year, and everyone hated me because they thought I stole him from her.”

Bellamy’s frown deepens, and he tries to rack his mind for any memory of this, but comes up blank. He didn’t meet Raven until he was a sophomore, and she was still freshly broken up over the whole Finn thing, so it must have happened during his retake year. He doesn’t remember a whole lot from then.

“I didn’t know,” he says, and feels like the worst boyfriend of all time.

“It’s okay, I know you didn’t. You had a lot going on that year.” Clarke sounds resigned about it, like she doesn’t mind, which just makes him feel somehow _worse_.

“Apparently so did you. I should have been there.”

“Yeah,” she says, and it’s actually better, that she doesn’t say no, or try to defend him for ditching her. “But you’re here now. That’s enough.”

“I can drive up to Polis,” he offers. “Knock his teeth in. I’ve got a pretty good punch.”

Clarke laughs, voice a deep lull over the phone. “That won’t be necessary, but thanks. I’ll keep it in mind. What about you? Any exes you need me to kill? I’m pretty deadly with a paintbrush.”

Bellamy grins. “Are you seriously fishing for stories about my awful ex-girlfriends?”

“Hey, I shared mine. Fair’s fair, Blake.”

“Okay,” he grants. “But you’re about to be disappointed. You’re the first girl I’ve ever dated.”

“Any guys?”

“First _person_ I’ve ever dated,” he corrects, and she stays quiet enough that he almost gets nervous.

“But—why? You’re so,” she hesitates, like she’s trying to come up with the right word. “You’re _amazing_ , Bellamy. You had to have had—admirers.”

“ _Admirers_?” he grins when she huffs at him. “You’re the first person I’ve ever wanted to date, okay?”

“Okay,” she says, slow. “I think my mom’s home, I just heard the car.”

“Well at least she doesn’t know you just called me for phone sex,” he teases.

“I don’t see why it would matter; she already knows we had sex-sex,” Clarke says, and he rolls off his mattress, banging his back on the floor. “What was that?”

“You,” he finishes choking. “You _told your mom_?” He’s honestly not sure he’s even alive at this point; everything feels very surreal.

“Who else was I supposed to tell?” Clarke asks, defensive.

“Wells,” Bellamy says immediately. “Raven. Nobody. _Anybody_ but _your mom_!” He might be hyperventilating. He’s not actually sure, since it’s never happened before, but that’s what this feels like.

“Why is this such a big deal?” she asks, and he wants to scream. He might, actually. It seems like a real possibility. “You have Monroe and Harper, I have my mom. We tell each other everything.”

“Except for where you’re going to school,” he snaps, and regrets it immediately. “Clarke, I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

“It’s fine,” she says, even though it’s clearly not. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Bellamy says, but it feels more like a goodbye than goodnight. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

He’s barely hung up the phone before Octavia’s banging on his door and hissing through the wood. _“That’s why you have a fucking cellphone, you animal!_ ”

“That’s why you don’t eavesdrop on people’s calls!” he calls back, refusing to feel bad, and hears her march across the hall to her room.

 

Bellamy’s barely out of his car, barely parked haphazardly at the curb outside Clarke’s house, before she’s running out the door towards him. He has just enough time to round the hood, mid-question and concerned, before she’s thrown herself at him, arms looped around his neck, face buried in his shoulder.

She’s still in her pajamas—old fleece bottoms two sizes too small, and the tank top she mentioned last night, feet bare and a little gray from the pavement.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and she laughs, pulling back a little so he can see her.

“The mail came at eight.” When he just stares, she adds “I liked your letter.”

He grins when she flushes, bright pink all down her chest and throat. “Yeah?”

She nods and leans in to kiss him, slow and sweet. She tastes like orange juice. “Yeah,” she says against his mouth. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

She nods, professionally, and then starts to tug him up the drive, towards the house. He only hesitates a little, but she still notices, and turns around to check.

“I just,” he glances up at the funeral home, looking more threatening than ever. He knows for a fact that there are a lot of very sharp instruments and dangerous chemicals in there that can kill him. “What if she secretly hates me now, and is just luring me in so she can shove me in one of those crematorium ovens?”

Clarke rolls her eyes. “We don’t have a crematorium oven. And anyway, she doesn’t hate you. She’s _maybe_ a little disappointed we didn’t wait longer, but she knows how I feel about you, and she trusts me.”

“What about me?”

“She trusts my judgement.”

“That’s basically a no, but okay.” He scrubs his free hand down his face, and Clarke runs her lips over his knuckles. “So, I’m not getting murdered today?”

“Not by my mother at least,” she chirps, and he lets her lead him inside.

The Griffin home is impeccable, and looks like one of those card catalogues for HGTV, but for rich people. Everything is shiny and charcoal-gray and expensive-looking. The curtains in the dining room are _mauve_. Bellamy can honestly say he’d never seen a real example of the color _mauve_ until now. It even _sounds_ high-end.

Clarke leads him down the hall into the kitchen, painted a deep scarlet color, which makes it the brightest room on the first floor. There’s a little wooden table and some chairs, but Clarke heads straight for the French press on the counter, to pour herself some coffee.

Bellamy makes a face, which she catches. “What?”

“How can you drink that stuff?” he asks, but he’s already moved onto the letter, open and clearly read, on the table. It’s sitting on top of the open newspaper with a half-finished crossword. There’s an uncapped pen beside it, and some sort of doodle in the margins of his letter, and when Bellamy leans closer to make it out, he sees that she’s drawn little heart-shaped balloons around his writing.

He glances up to find her flushing, looking pointedly down at her mug, and he grins. “Wow, so you _really_ liked it.”

“Shut up,” she sticks her tongue out.

“Mature.”

“Coffee’s awesome,” she shoots back, and he shakes his head.

“Gross,” he says, right as Abby Griffin walks in, looking pressed and professional in a charcoal gray pantsuit, matching everything else in the room except them.

“Hey mom,” Clarke says brightly. “You remember Bellamy.”

She eyes him for a moment, surprisingly mild. “Good morning, Bellamy. How is your summer going?”

“Well, thanks, Mrs. Griffin,” he says, sounding as awkward as he feels, and Clarke makes a face at him from over her mom’s shoulder.

“That’s good to hear,” Abby says, and he thinks she might even mean it. “I have to meet some clients in the parlor.” She turns to Clarke, looking suddenly stern. “All the doors stay open, Clarke.”

Clarke rolls her eyes, but nods, and Bellamy tries to keep his blush at least _somewhat_ contained, but it’s _hard_ , knowing that his girlfriend’s mom knows they’ve fucked already.

Abby presses a kiss to her daughter’s head before leaving, and then Clarke nods her head towards the stairs, for him to follow her up. The walls are lined with framed photos, but not the kind he’s used to seeing in houses; not filled with laughing, staged families, but instead with abstract angles of hands, and white flowers, and a farm field, and a wind turbine. Bellamy’s not really sure what any of them mean, but they sort of remind him of a class he took on the symbolism in Steinbeck’s work.

Clarke’s room is pretty much exactly as he remembers—pretty and pastel, green and pink and purple, with her enormous frilly bed and her matching wooden furniture and her lava lamp in the corner that comes up to his hip.

She leaves the door open, but cracked, and tugs him over to perch on the edge of her mattress. “I’m going to tell her at lunch,” she says, like she think she owes him an explanation. Bellamy waits until she’s set her mug on the cluttered white end table, and then wraps her up in his arms.

She makes a little noise of surprise before hugging him back just as tight, and he presses his face to her hair, breathing her in. He only has three more weeks—two and a half, really—of this. He refuses to miss out on it just because he’s an asshole who doesn’t think before he speaks.

“Tell her or don’t tell her, I don’t care,” he says, voice muffled by her hair. “I love you, and I know long-distance almost never works, but I think maybe we could.”

Clarke nods into his shoulder, pulling back to kiss his cheek, his chin, his upper lip, right over the scar he got from a neighborhood cat once. He had to get a tetanus shot, and lay in the hospital bed for two days. His mom missed a lot of work because of it, and they didn’t have health insurance. She brought that weekend up to him for years— _remember that time you tried to rescue that stray? I was out of a job for four days. Took me two years to pay off those hospital bills._ It was always about money with his mom. Until O took control of things in his life, Bellamy didn’t know it could ever be about anything else.

“I love you, I love you, I love you,” she says, and he holds her curled up in his lap until he has to leave for work.

Clarke comes to find him at the library, while he’s dusting the top of the shelves with the old rickety maintenance stepladder and the baby wipes Anya gave him to get the job done. Clarke comes up right as he’s stepping off the bottom rung onto the carpet, and he’s about to ask her how the talk with her mom went, when she beats him to the punch.

“Come with me.”

She’s grinning and giddy and hopeful, clearly waiting for him to say yes.

“Sure, obviously. Where are we going?”

“No,” she shakes her head a little, and he’s not sure he’s ever seen her so wired. It’s a little disconcerting but mostly awesome, since he thinks it means everything went well. “Come with me to Chicago. Like, to live.”

For a moment, Bellamy just stares, and he can see the hope start to dim in her eyes as doubt takes its place. He thinks about living in Chicago, living _with Clarke_ in Chicago, but to be honest he doesn’t have to try very hard to picture it; he’s been dreaming about it for weeks.

He thinks about getting to fall asleep with her, eat dinner with her, and breakfast and every meal in between, getting to kiss her whenever he wants to.

But what would he even _do_ in Chicago? He’s not like Clarke—he’s not talented enough at any one thing, or focused enough for a degree. He’s barely even a high school graduate. There’s no college in his future, probably nothing more than a few part-time jobs, making minimum wage with no benefits, coming home exhausted to a shitty apartment even though she deserves better. But she’d stay in it, for him, and does he really want that? Does he want to be the reason Clarke Griffin gets held down?

Apparently he's been too quiet too long, because Clarke starts to babble, all nerves. "I just thought, Chicago probably doesn't have enough kickboxing librarians, you know? And there are so many books there you haven't read yet. And I know we could make it long distance, but I'm not ready to say goodbye yet."

He almost says no. A nicer guy would have. But Bellamy’s always sort of struggled with being _nice_.

“Okay,” he says, and grins a little when Clarke looks like someone’s just poured cold water down her shirt.

“Okay?”

“Okay,” he repeats, laughing, and she squeals a little, rushing at him so that they both nearly topple over the ladder. He barely keeps them upright.

“We’re doing this?” she asks, a little breathless, which is almost exactly how he feels.

Bellamy tightens his arms around her, just for a second, before he has to get back to work. He’ll have to put in his two weeks’ notice—shit, he’ll have to tell _O_.

“Yeah,” he says, sighs it into her hair. “We’re doing this.”

 

Clarke recruits Kai to help her pack the last of their bags into Bellamy’s MR-2, in an effort to give the Blake siblings some privacy. She knows Octavia’s fine with it, was strangely fine with it the first night Bellamy tentatively told her about the whole plan.

 _“It’s your life Bell,”_ she’d shrugged.

And when Bellamy had used all the usual arguments--throwing his life away for a girl, they've only dated for three months, he doesn't know what he's doing--Octavia had just said "You never know what you're doing. At least this way you can try to figure it out in a cool city."

Bellamy had sounded more than a little thrown when he’d told Clarke about it over the phone.

 _“Maybe she just wants you to move out,”_ she’d mused, but Bellamy was unimpressed.

 _“She’s up to something,”_ he’d sworn. _“I just don’t know what.”_ He’d spent the rest of the week in perpetual suspicion, but O hadn’t set out any sort of spring traps or nailed him into his closet or anything, so Clarke figured she was probably okay with the move, and Bellamy just didn’t know how to take that.

Clarke’s conversation with her mom had gone relatively the opposite; at first, Abby thought Chicago was just a passing thought, along with art school. Then she tried to blame Bellamy, even though Clarke had sent in her application long before they’d begun dating. Finally, she’d accepted Chicago _and_ art school, but the fact that Bellamy was moving there _with_ her was a totally new battle that took another two hours or so.

Eventually, Clarke had to pull the _don’t you trust me?_ card, and Abby surrendered pretty quickly after that. She does trust _Clarke_ , she just doesn’t always trust the world not to mess things up for her.

She’d called Wells again that morning, just to be sure she’d covered all her bases. Twice.

“You don’t think this is a little crazy?”

“How come you never say hello anymore?” Wells asked. “You never even ask about my day.”

“Hello Wells, how’s your day going?”

“Great, thanks. Dad’s gone so I’m making sherbet crepes for breakfast. Also, yes, it’s definitely a little crazy. Maybe going to a great school on a full ride scholarship with your very serious boyfriend might not seem crazy to anyone else, but it’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen you do. We’ve been over this. You _need_ a little crazy—or maybe _need_ isn’t the right word. Clarke you deserve a little crazy. You’ve earned this.”

“Thanks,” she grinned, instantly relaxed. Wells shouldn’t even bother getting his psychology degree; he’s basically a therapist already. “Is Raven there?”

“You know she is,” Wells said, and Clarke was a little grateful they weren’t pretending it was a surprise anymore, when they just _happened_ to be together. “I only make sherbet crepes on special occasions.”

“What the fuck sentimentality is this?” Raven barked, and Clarke grinned. Raven, maybe, was still trying to pretend. “How many times do we have to tell you you’re allowed to be happy? Go forth and marry Blake, buy a house, and have 2.5 children. I’m assuming they’ll all play soccer, and jet ski on summer breaks.”

“They’ll be kickboxing chess champions,” Clarke confirmed, worrying her lip. “Am I doing the right thing, taking Bellamy? What if he hates it? What if we break up?”

“What if a piano falls from the sky and crushes one or both of you?”

“Helpful,” Clarke frowned, and Raven heaved a sigh that sounded too big for her body.

“My point is—if you ask yourself _what if’s_ all day long, you’ll never get anywhere. Be like the majestic heron, Clarke. The heron never asks _what if this fish has a family or an important career?_ It just eats the fish.”

“As always, Raven, you are wise beyond your years.”

“I know,” Raven said with a sniff. “Now go be stupid happy with your idiotic boyfriend. I have some crepes to eat.” She’d hung up without saying goodbye, because Raven _hates_ goodbyes, but Clarke didn’t mind.

Once the car is packed, she offers Kai a fist bump—he’s very into fist bumps these days, and always has to make them explode, with the proper sound effects. There’s a lot of unfortunate spitting involved—and then slides into the passenger seat, kicking her feet up on the dash. Bellamy hates it when she does, but if she keeps at it long enough, he’ll start keeping a hand, warm and firm on her thigh, which is her real goal anyway.

Clarke starts cuing up the tape that Harper made them, a road trip playlist set to the backdrop of the American Midwest. Technically, flying would have been cheaper and easier, but Clarke refuses to step foot in an airplane, not after what happened to her dad, and Bellamy wasn’t about to force her. Though she has the feeling that if anyone could help her get through it, it’d be him.

Maybe next time.

For now, there’s just them, and this ancient car that she’s honestly not sure will last the whole ride, and six states to drive through, and Rusted Root starting up through the speakers.

Bellamy slips in behind the wheel, shoots a glare at her feet and reaches over to knock them down before he starts the engine.

“Ready?” he asks her, grin wide and somehow so _sure_.

Clarke reaches for his hand; he’ll need it, at some point, to shift with—but until then, he lets her fold their fingers together, and squeeze.

“Let’s go.”

 


End file.
